Editing East Slavs (section)

===Migration===
{{main|Early Slavs}}
<!-- Deleted image removed: [[File:Slavyanskiy poselok pchelko.jpg|thumb|250px|"Slavic settlement" by I. Pchelko]] -->

There is no consensus among scholars as to the [[urheimat]] of the [[Slavs]]. In the first millennium AD, Slavic settlers are likely to have been in contact with other ethnic groups who moved across the [[Eastern Europe]]an Plain during the [[Migration Period]]. Between the first and ninth centuries, the [[Sarmatians]], [[Huns]], [[Alans]], [[Avars (Carpathians)|Avars]], [[Bulgars]], and [[Magyars]] passed through the [[Pontic steppe]] in their westward migrations. Although some of them could have subjugated the region's Slavs, these foreign tribes left little trace in the Slavic lands. The [[Early Middle Ages]] also saw Slavic expansion as an agriculturist and [[beekeeper]], hunter, fisher, herder, and trapper people. By the 8th century, the Slavs were the dominant ethnic group on the East European Plain.{{Citation needed|date=June 2022}}

By 600 AD, the [[Slavs]] had split linguistically into [[South Slavs|southern]], [[West Slavs|western]], and eastern branches. The East Slavs practiced "[[slash-and-burn]]" agricultural methods which took advantage of the extensive forests in which they settled.  This method of agriculture involved clearing tracts of forest with fire, cultivating it and then moving on after a few years.  Slash and burn agriculture requires frequent movement because soil cultivated in this manner only yields good harvests for a few years before exhausting itself, and the reliance on slash and burn agriculture by the East Slavs explains their rapid spread through eastern Europe.<ref name="Pipes">[[Richard Pipes]]. (1995). ''Russia Under the Old Regime''. New York: Penguin Books. pp. 27–28</ref>  The East Slavs flooded Eastern Europe in two streams. One group of tribes settled along the [[Dnieper]] river in what is now [[Ukraine]] and [[Belarus]] to the North; they then spread northward to the northern [[Volga]] valley, east of modern-day [[Moscow]] and westward to the basins of the northern [[Dniester]] and the [[Southern Buh]] rivers in present-day [[Ukraine]] and southern Ukraine.{{Citation needed|date=June 2022}}

Another group of East Slavs moved to the northeast, where they encountered the [[Varangians]] of the [[Rus' Khaganate]] and established an important regional centre of [[Novgorod]] for protection. The same Slavic population also settled the present-day [[Tver Oblast]] and the region of [[Beloozero]]. Having reached the lands of the [[Merya people|Merya]] near [[Rostov, Yaroslavl Oblast|Rostov]], they linked up with the Dnieper group of Slavic migrants.{{Citation needed|date=June 2022}}