TheDnieper Balts were a subgroup of theBalts that lived in theDnieper river basin for millennia until theLate Middle Ages, when they were partly destroyed and partly assimilated by theSlavs by the 13th century.[1] To the north and northeast of the Dnieper Balts were theVolga Finns, and to the southeast and south were theancient Iranians, theScythians.[1]
The Dnieper Balts have been studied by many researchers, such as the Lithuanian linguistKazimieras Būga, the German linguistMax Vasmer, and the Russian linguistsVladimir Toporov andOleg Trubachyov.[1]
In the early 20th century, the Lithuanian linguistKazimieras Būga showed that essentially all names in the upper Nemunas and upper Dnieper basins were Baltic.[2] In 1962, the Russian linguistsVladimir Toporov andOleg Trubachyov, in their work, the "Linguistic analysis of the hydronyms of the Upper Dnieper region" (Russian:Лингвистический анализ гидронимов Верхнего Поднепровья), demonstrated that more than a thousand names in the Dnieper basin were of Baltic origin, due to theirmorphology andetymology.[3]
The former ethnic Balticness of theDnieper basin is evidenced by numerous archaeological finds, as well as hydronyms.[1] For example, the hydronymsYauza,Khimka [ru] andMoskva, are of Baltic origin according to Toporov.[4] In thelate Bronze Age, the Balts lived in territories from what is now thewestern border of Poland to theUral Mountains.[5] However, some propose a smaller territory of Baltic inhabitation from theVistula in the west to at least as far asMoscow in the east and as far south asKyiv.[6]
Various archeological monuments and the prevalence of Baltichydronyms indicate that by the end of theNeolithic period (c. 3rd to2nd millennium BC), there were several closely related, at least hypothetically Baltic, cultures inCentral andEastern Europe, which were thePamariai, (Late)Narva, and (Late)Nemunas cultures.[7] The earliest of them is the Pamariai culture, which covered only a narrow part of the southeastern coast of theBaltic Sea.[8]
During theBronze (c. 2nd to1st millennium BC) andIron (c. 1st millennium BC to 1st millennium AD) Ages, in the lands to the east and south of modern-dayLithuania andLatvia, there were Baltic (Late)Narva and theBrushed Pottery cultures (the areas of these two cultures included the east of present-day Lithuania and Latvia), theDnieper-Daugava culture [lt],Yukhniv [lt] and the laterDyakovo cultures.[9]
In the 3rd and 5th centuries AD, the aforementioned Baltic cultures of theDnieper,Daugava andOka basins transformed into theKolochin,Tushemlia [lt] andMoshchiny cultures, which existed until the 8th–10th centuries.[9] This transformation was due to the strong influence of the culture of theWestern Balts, which moved from the territory of what is nowPoland deep into the Dnieper basin as early as the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.[10]
Moshchiny culture is considered to be the ancestor of theEastern Galindians, who lived in the lands nearMoscow and within theProtva river basin.[9]
In the middle of the 1st millennium, Slavs began to invade the Baltic territory of the Dnieper Balts along the Dnieper and its tributaries.[1] In the 7th century, the Slavs, that previously only lived inRight-bank Ukraine, started invading the Baltic lands in the eastern Dnieper basin.[4] Since the 7th and 8th centuries, the linguistic and culturalSlavicisation of Dnieper Balts was accelerated by the conversion of the multilingual tribes living inRuthenia toEastern Orthodoxy.[4] By the early 9th century, only small numbers of Slavs had gone into Upper Dnieper and the majority were still Balts, with the Slavs mostly settling nearGnezdovo.[11]
Some researchers believe that after theChristianization of Kievan Rus' in 988, part of the Dnieper Balts retreated westwards, eventually merging intoLithuanians andLatgalians.[4] In the 9th and 10th centuries, the majority of the Dnieper Balts were separated from the other Balts living in the west by Slavic migrants moving north on the Dnieper banks.[4] In the 11th and 12th centuries, out of the Dnieper Balts, only theEastern Galindians remained undestroyed by the eastern Slavs.[2]
The Lithuanian professorZigmas Zinkevičius writes that:
It is thought that the Dnieper Balts, just as the other Balts living to the east from present-day Lithuania and Latvia, had an important influence on the Slavs who moved to these lands and the formation ofEast Slavic as a separate linguistic group.[1]
According to some researchers, the pagan religion of the Dnieper Balts included the veneration of pillars withbear heads.[12]