Editing Balts (section)

===Proto-history===
The area of Baltic habitation shrank due to assimilation by other groups, and invasions. According to one of the theories which has gained considerable traction over the years, one of the western Baltic tribes, the [[Galindians]], Galindae, or Goliad, migrated to the area around modern-day Moscow, Russia around the fourth century AD.<ref>[https://www.academia.edu/37147068/%D0%91%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%82%D1%8B_%D0%B2_%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F%D1%85_%D0%92%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B2._%D0%93%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%8B_%D0%98%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D1%84%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%82_3-4_2017._%D0%A1._95-124 Tarasov I. The balts in the Migration Period. P. I. Galindians, pp. 96, 100-112.]</ref>

Over time the Balts became differentiated into West and East Balts. In the fifth century AD parts of the eastern Baltic coast began to be settled by the ancestors of the Western Balts: [[Old Prussians|Brus/Prūsa]] ("Old Prussians"), [[Sudovians]]/[[Jotvingians]], [[Scalvians]], [[Nadruvians]], and [[Curonians]]. The East Balts, including the hypothesised [[Dniepr Balts]], were living in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}}

[[Germanic peoples]] lived to the west of the Baltic homelands; by the first century AD, the [[Goths]] had stabilized their kingdom from the mouth of the Vistula, south to [[Dacia]]. As Roman domination collapsed in the first half of the first millennium CE in Northern and Eastern Europe, large migrations of the Balts occurred — first, the [[Galindae]] or Galindians towards the east, and later, East Balts towards the west. In the eighth century, Slavic tribes from the Volga regions appeared.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Engel |first1=Barbara Alpern |last2=Martin |first2=Janet |title=Russia in World History |date=2015 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-023943-5 |page=16 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uMEfCAAAQBAJ&pg=PT16 |language=en |quote=Slavic tribes had reached the territories of the Finns and Balts in the eighth century.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Gleason |first1=Abbott |title=A Companion to Russian History |date=2014 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-118-73000-3 |page=106 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AXxBAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA106 |language=en |quote=moved ... to the Baltic in the eighth-ninth centuries}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Gimbutas |first1=Marija |title=The Slavs (Ancient Peoples and Places, Vol. 74) |date=1971 |publisher=Thames and Hudson |isbn=0500020728 |page=97 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CC07UaXfR74C |language=en |quote=no finds of Slavic character can be identified before the eighth century}}</ref> By the 13th and 14th centuries, they reached the general area that the present-day Balts and Belarusians inhabit. Many other Eastern and Southern Balts either assimilated with other Balts, or Slavs in the fourth–seventh centuries and were gradually slavicized.<ref>{{Citation |last=Bell-Fialkoff |first=Andrew |title=The Slavs |date=2000 |work=The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe: Sedentary Civilization vs. “Barbarian” and Nomad |pages=133–149 |editor-last=Bell-Fialkoff |editor-first=Andrew |url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-61837-8_8 |access-date=2024-08-31 |place=New York |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan US |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-1-349-61837-8_8 |isbn=978-1-349-61837-8}}</ref>