II.

Origins

The early Slavs were farmers and herders living in the marshes and woodlands of what is now eastern Poland and western Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. From about ad 150 the Slavic peoples began to expand in all directions. To the north they followed the rivers through the forests of Russia, occupying territory populated by Finnish and Baltic peoples, many of whom they absorbed. To the west they encountered Germanic and Celtic groups as they occupied much of Central Europe. By the 7th century the Slavs had reached as far south as the Adriatic and Aegean seas. During the next two centuries they settled in most of the Balkan Peninsula, then part of the Byzantine Empire, dislocating indigenous populations or slavicizing newcomers, such as the Bulgarians. To the east, by the end of the 16th century, the Russians had already secured a permanent foothold beyond the Ural Mountains in Asia, and, by the 19th century, Slavic culture had reached the Pacific Ocean.