A similar series of changes in racial predominance took place in Russia where in addition to a nobility largely Nordic a section of the population is of ancient Nordic type, although the bulk of the peasantry consists of Alpine Slavs. The Alpines in eastern Europe are represented by various branches of the “Slavic” nations. Their area of distribution was split into two sections by the occupation of the great Dacian plain first by the Avars about 600 A. D. and later by the Hungarians about 900 A. D. These Avars and Magyars came from somewhere in eastern Russia beyond the sphere of Aryan speech and their invasions separated the northern Slavs, known as Wends, Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles, from the southern Slavs, known as Serbs and Croats. These southern Slavs entered the Balkan Peninsula in the sixth century from the northeast and to-day form the great mass of the population there. The centre of radiation of all these Slavic-speaking Alpines was located in the Carpathians, especially the Ruthenian districts of Galicia and eastward to the neighborhood of the Pripet swamps and the head-waters of the Dnieper in Polesia, where the Slavic dialects are believed to have developed and whence they spread throughout Russia about the eighth century. These early Slavs were probably the Sarmatians of the Greek and Roman writers. Their name “Venethi” seems to have been a later designation. The original Proto-Slavic language being Aryan must have been at some distant date imposed by Nordics upon the Alpines, but its development into the present Slavic tongues was chiefly the work of Alpines. In other words, the expansion of the Alpines of the Slavic-speaking group seems to have occurred after the Fourth Century and they have spread in the East over areas which were originally Nordic, very much as the Teutons had previously overrun and submerged the earlier Alpines in the West. The Mongol, Tatar and Turk who invaded Europe much later reinforced the brachycephalic element in these countries. To some extent the round skulled Alpines in Russia have been reinforced by way of the Caucasus and the route north of the Black Sea by their kindred in western Asia. The greater part of the purely Asiatic types has been thoroughly absorbed and Europeanized except in certain localities in Russia more especially in the east and south, where Mongoloid tribes such as the Mordvins, Bashkirs and Kalmucks have maintained their type either in isolated and relatively large groups or side by side with their Slavic neighbors. In both cases the isolation is maintained through religious and social differences. The Avars preceded the Magyars in Hungary, but they have merged with the latter without leaving traces that can be identified. Certain Mongoloid characters found in Bulgaria are believed, however, to be of Avar origin.