Editing Russians (section)

=== Ancient history ===
{{further|Rus' people|Old Russians}}
[[File:East Slavic tribes peoples 8th 9th century.jpg|thumb|[[East Slavs|East Slavic]] tribes and peoples, 8th–9th century]]
The ancestors of modern Russians are the [[List of ancient Slavic peoples|Slavic tribes]], whose original home is thought by some scholars to have been the wooded areas of the [[Pripet Marshes|Pinsk Marshes]], one of the largest [[wetland]]s in Europe.<ref>For a discussion of the origins of Slavs, see {{Cite book|last=Barford, P. M.|title=The Early Slavs|publisher=Cornell University Press|pages=15–16|isbn=978-0-8014-3977-3|year=2001}}</ref> The East Slavs gradually settled Western Russia with [[Moscow]] included in two waves: one moving from [[Kiev]] toward present-day [[Suzdal]] and [[Murom]] and another from [[Polotsk]] toward [[Novgorod]] and [[Rostov, Yaroslavl Oblast|Rostov]].<ref name="Christian">{{Cite book|author=[[David Christian (historian)|Christian, D.]]|title=A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia|publisher=Blackwell Publishing|year=1998|pages=286–288|isbn=978-0-631-20814-3}}</ref> Prior to the Slavic migration  in the 6-7th centuries, the Suzdal-Murom and Novgorod-Rostov areas  were populated by [[Finnic peoples]],<ref name="backus">{{Cite journal |last=Backus |first=Oswald P. |date=1973 |title=The impact of the Baltic and Finnic peoples upon Russian history |url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01629777300000011 |journal=Journal of Baltic Studies |language=en |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=1–10 |doi=10.1080/01629777300000011 |issn=0162-9778}}</ref> including the [[Meryans|Merya]],<ref>{{Cite book|author=Paszkiewicz, H.K.|title=The Making of the Russian Nation|publisher=Darton, Longman & Todd|year=1963|page=262}}</ref> the [[Muromians|Muromian]]s,<ref>{{Cite book|author=McKitterick, R.|title=The New Cambridge Medieval History|publisher=Cambridge University Press|date=15 June 1995|page=497|isbn=0521364477}}</ref> and the [[Meshchera]].<ref>{{Cite book|author=[[Aleksandr Mongait|Mongaĭt, A.L.]]|title=Archeology in the U.S.S.R.|publisher=Foreign Languages Publishing House|year=1959|page=335}}</ref>

From the 7th century onwards, the East Slavs slowly assimilated the native Finnic peoples,<ref>Ed. [[Timothy Reuter]], ''The New Cambridge Medieval History'', Volume 3, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 494-497. {{ISBN|0-521-36447-7}}.</ref> so that by year 1100, the majority of the population in Western Russia was Slavic-speaking.<ref name="Christian"/><ref name="backus"/> Recent genetic studies confirm the presence of a Finnic substrate in modern Russian population.<ref>
Interactions between gene pools of Russian and Finnish-speaking populations from tver region: Analysis of 4 million snp markers. 2020. Bull Russ State Med Univ. 6, 15-22. O.P. Balanovsky, I.O. Gorin, Y.S. Zapisetskaya, A.A. Golubeva, E.V. Kostryukova, E.V. Balanovska. doi: 10.24075/BRSMU.2020.072.</ref>

Outside archaeological remains, little is known about the predecessors to Russians in general prior to 859 AD, when the ''[[Primary Chronicle]]'' starts its records.<ref>The ''Primary Chronicle'' is a history of the Ancient Rus' from around 850 to 1110, originally compiled in [[Kiev]] about 1113.</ref> By 600 AD, the [[Slavs]] are believed to have split linguistically into [[South Slavs|southern]], [[West Slavs|western]], and eastern branches.{{citation needed|date=August 2022}}