History of Russia

History
Main article: History of Russia
Early history
Further information: Scythia, Ancient Greek colonies, Early Slavs, East Slavs, Huns, Turkic expansion, and Prehistory of Siberia
See also: Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic
Nomadic pastoralism developed in the Pontic-Caspian steppe beginning in the Chalcolithic.[21] In classical antiquity, the Pontic Steppe was known as Scythia.

Beginning in the 8th century BC, Ancient Greek traders brought their civilization to the trade emporiums located in the Russian cities of Tanais and Phanagoria.

In the 3rd to 4th centuries AD, the Gothic kingdom of Oium existed in Southern Russia, which was later overrun by Huns. Between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD, the Bosporan Kingdom, which was a Hellenistic polity that succeeded the Greek colonies,[22] was also overwhelmed by nomadic invasions led by warlike tribes such as the Huns and Eurasian Avars.[23] A Turkic people, the Khazars, ruled the lower Volga basin steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas until the 10th century.[24]

The ancestors of modern Russians are the Slavic tribes, whose original home is thought by some scholars to have been the wooded areas of the Pinsk Marshes, one of the largest wetlands in Europe.[25] The East Slavs gradually settled Western Russia in two waves: one moving from Kiev toward present-day Suzdal and Murom and another from Polotsk toward Novgorod and Rostov. From the 7th century onwards, the East Slavs constituted the bulk of the population in Western Russia,[26] and assimilated the native Finno-Ugric peoples, including the Merya, the Muromians, and the Meshchera.