1.
Yamna culture
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The Yamna culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester and Ural rivers, dating to 3500–2300 BC. The Yamna culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans, and is the strongest candidate for the Urheimat of the Proto-Indo-European language, Yamna and Yamnaya are borrowed from Ukrainian, Ямна культура and Russian, Ямная культура respectively, and both mean pit-grave. The root in both cases is яма meaning pit, in these groups, there are present several aspects of the Yamna culture. Studies have also established that these populations derived large parts of their ancestry from the steppes, the Yamna culture originated in the Don-Volga area, and is dated 3300–2500 BC. It was preceded by the middle Volga-based Khvalynsk culture and the Don-based Repin culture, the early Yamnaya horizon spread quickly across the Pontic-Caspian steppes between ca.3400 and 3200 BC. According to Anthony, the spread of the Yamnaya horizon was the expression of the spread of late Proto-Indo-European across the Pontic-Caspian steppes. In its western range, it was succeeded by the Catacomb culture, in the east and these two cultures were followed by the Srubna culture. According to Jones et al. and Haak et al, each of those two populations contributed about half the Yamnaya DNA. Remains of the Eastern European hunter-gatherers have been found in Mesolithic or early Neolithic sites in Karelia and Samara Oblast, Russia, three such hunter-gathering individuals of the male sex have had their DNA results published. Each was found to belong to a different Y-DNA haplogroup, R1a, R1b, the Near East population were most likely hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus c. q. Iran Chalcolithic related people with a CHG-component, who descended from the early neolithic Zagros Farmers. Jones et al. analyzed genomes from males from western Georgia, in the Caucasus, from the Late Upper Palaeolithic and these two males carried Y-DNA haplogroup, J* and J2a. Their genomes showed that a mixture of the Caucasians with Middle Eastern took place up to 25,000 years ago. A population related to the people of the Iran Chalcolithic contributed ~43% of the ancestry of early Bronze Age populations of the steppe. According to Lazaridis et al. these Iranian Chalcolithic people were a mixture of the Neolithic people of western Iran, the Levant, the Yamna culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans in the Kurgan hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas. Significantly, animal grave offerings were made, an associated with Proto-Indo-Europeans. The culture was nomadic, with some agriculture practiced near rivers. Characteristic for the culture are the inhumations in pit graves under kurgans, the dead bodies were placed in a supine position with bent knees and covered in ochre
2.
Catacomb culture
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The Catacomb culture is a group of related cultures in the early Bronze Age occupying essentially what is present-day eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. The culture was the first to introduce corded pottery decorations into the steppes and shows a use of the polished battle axe. Parallels with the Afanasevo culture, including provoked cranial deformations, provide a link to the East and it was preceded by the Yamna culture. The Catacomb culture in the Pontic steppe was succeeded in the west by the Multi-cordoned ware culture from c. 22th century BC, the name Catacomb culture comes from its burial practices. These are similar to those of the Yamna culture, but with a space off the main shaft. Animal remains were incorporated into a minority of graves. The economy was essentially stock-breeding, although traces of grain have been found, there seem to have been skilled specialists, particularly metal-workers. The origin of the Catacomb culture is disputed, jan Lichardus gives three possibilities, a local development departing from the previous Yamna Culture only, a migration from Central Europe, or an oriental origin. The culture is first to introduce corded pottery decorations into the steppes and shows a use of the polished battle axe. Parallels with the Afanasevo culture, including provoked cranial deformations, provide a link to the East, excavations in 2012 of 26 mounds near Storozhove village in Chutove Region of Poltava Oblast revealed 3 layers of Catacomb culture archaeology. The earliest were the burials of the Donetsk phase of Catacomb culture, then came the burials of Inhul phase. Later material belonged to Berezhnivsko-Maivska type of Srubna culture, the Catacomb culture was replaced by the Srubna culture from c. 17th century BC. The language of the Catacomb culture must naturally remain unknown, within the context of the Kurgan hypothesis expounded by Marija Gimbutas, an Indo-European component is speculated about, particularly in the later stages. Placing the ancestors of the Greek, Albanian and Armenian dialects here is tempting, more recently, the Ukrainian archaeologist V. Kulbaka has argued that the Late Yamna cultures of c. 3200–2800 BC, esp. the Budzhak, Starosilsk, and Novotitarovka groups, might represent the Balkan-Indo-European-Iranian ancestors, however, according to recent glottochronological computations, these splits occurred much earlier. Grigoryevs version of the Armenian hypothesis connects Catacomb culture with Indo-Aryans, the same opinion is supported by Leo Klejn in his various publications. Shaft grave Media related to Catacomb culture at Wikimedia Commons Grigoryev, ISBN 966-7329-30-5 Mallory, J. P. Catacomb Culture, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn
3.
Bosporan Kingdom
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The Bosporan Kingdom was the longest surviving Roman client kingdom. The 1st and 2nd centuries BC saw a period of renewed golden age of the Bosporan state and it was a Roman province from 63 to 68 AD, under Emperor Nero. At the end of the 2nd century AD, King Sauromates II inflicted a defeat on the Scythians. The prosperity of the Bosporan Kingdom was based on the export of wheat, fish and these include gold work, vases imported from Athens, coarse terracottas, textile fragments and specimens of carpentry and marquetry. These Greek colonies were settled by Milesians in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Phanagoria was a colony of Teos, and the foundation of Nymphaeum may have had a connection with Athens, at least it appears to have been a member of the Delian League in the 5th century. The Bosporan Kingdom was centred around the Kerch Strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, known in antiquity as the Cimmerian Bosporus from where the name derived. Spartocus founded a dynasty which seems to have endured until c.110 BC, surviving material do not supply enough information to reconstruct a complete chronology of kings of the region. Satyrus son Leucon eventually took the city and he was succeeded jointly by his two sons, Spartocus II, and Paerisades, Spartocus died in 342, allowing Paerisades to reign alone until 310. After Paerisades death, a war between his sons Satyrus and Eumelus was fought. Satyrus defeated his younger brother Eumelus at the Battle of the River Thatis in 310 BC but was killed in battle. Eumelus successor was Spartocus III and after him Paerisades II, succeeding princes repeated the family names, so it is impossible to assign them a definite order. Paerisades was killed by a Scythian named Saumacus who led a rebellion against him and they maintained close relations with Athens, their best customer for the Bosporan grain exports, Leucon I of Bosporus created privileges for Athenian ships at Bosporan ports. The Attic orators make numerous references to this, in return the Athenians granted Leucon Athenian citizenship and made decrees in honour of him and his sons. His eldest living son, Machares, regent of Cimmerian Bosporus, was unwilling to aid his father, so Mithridates had Machares killed, Mithridates then ordered the conscriptions and preparations for war. In 63 BC, Pharnaces, the youngest son of Mithridates, led a rebellion against his father, Mithridates VI withdrew to the citadel in Panticapaeum, where he committed suicide. Pompey buried Mithridates VI in a tomb in either Sinope or Amasia. Before the death of Pharnaces II, Asander had married Pharnaces II’s daughter Dynamis, Asander and Dynamis were the ruling monarchs until Caesar commanded a paternal uncle of Dynamis, Mithridates II to declare war on the Bosporan Kingdom and claimed the kingship for himself
4.
Sarmatians
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The Sarmatians were a large confederation of Iranian people during classical antiquity, flourishing from about the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD. They spoke Scythian, an Indo-European language from the Eastern Iranian family and their territory, which was known as Sarmatia to Greco-Roman ethnographers, corresponded to the western part of greater Scythia. In the 1st century AD the Sarmatians began encroaching upon the Roman Empire in alliance with Germanic tribes, in the 3rd century AD their dominance of the Pontic Steppe was broken by the Germanic Goths. With the Hunnic invasions of the 4th century, many Sarmatians joined the Goths, a related people to the Sarmatians known as the Alans survived in the North Caucasus into the Early Middle Ages, ultimately giving rise to the modern Ossetic ethnic group. The Sarmatians were eventually assimilated and absorbed by the Proto-Slavic population of Eastern Europe. Sarmatae probably originated as just one of several names of the Sarmatians. Strabo in the 1st century names as the tribes of the Sarmatians the Iazyges, the Roxolani, the Aorsi. The Greek name Sarmatai sometimes appears as Sauromatai, which is almost certainly no more than a variant of the same name, nevertheless, historians often regarded these as two separate peoples, while archaeologists habitually use the term Sauromatian to identify the earliest phase of Sarmatian culture. Any idea that the name derives from the lizard, linking to the Sarmatians use of reptile-like scale armour. Both Pliny the Elder and Jordanes recognised the Sar- and Sauro- elements as interchangeable variants, Greek authors of the 4th century mention Syrmatae as the name of a people living at the Don, perhaps reflecting the ethnonym as it was pronounced in the final phase of Sarmatian culture. Oleg Trubachyov derived the name from the Indo-Aryan *sar-mat, the Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian word *sar-, by this derivation was noted the unusual high status of women from the Greek point of view and went to the invention of Amazons. Other scholars, like Harold Walter Bailey, derived the word from Avestan sar- from tsar- in Old Iranian. It was also derived from the name of Avestan region in the west Sairima, recently R. M. Kozlova derived it from *Sъrm- < Proto-Slavic adjective *sъrmatъ, with the meaning that is rich with sormima i. e. shallows, referring to the rivers. The Sarmatians emerged in the 7th century BC in a region of the steppe to the east of the Don River, for centuries they lived in relatively peaceful co-existence with their western neighbors the Scythians. Then, in the 3rd century BC, they fought with the Scythians on the Pontic steppe to the north of the Black Sea, the Sarmatians were to dominate these territories over the next five centuries. Pliny the Elder wrote that they ranged from the Vistula River to the Danube, in 1947, Soviet archaeologist Boris Grakov defined a culture flourishing from the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD, apparent in late kurgan graves, sometimes reusing part of much older kurgans. It was a nomadic steppe culture ranging from the Black Sea eastward to beyond the Volga, in Hungary, a great Late Sarmatian pottery centre was reportedly unearthed between 2001 and 2006 near Budapest, in the Üllő5 archaeological site. Typical grey, granular Üllő5 ceramics form a group of Sarmatian pottery found everywhere in the north central part of the Great Hungarian Plain region
5.
Huns
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The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia between the 1st century AD and the 7th century AD. In 91 AD, the Huns were said to be living near the Caspian Sea, by 370, the Huns had established a vast, if short-lived, dominion in Europe. In the 18th century, the French scholar Joseph de Guignes became the first to propose a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu people, who were neighbours of China in the 3rd century BC. Since Guignes time, considerable effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection. However, there is no consensus on a direct connection between the dominant element of the Xiongnu and that of the Huns. Numerous other ethnic groups were included under Attilas rule, including very many speakers of Gothic and their main military technique was mounted archery. The Huns may have stimulated the Great Migration, a factor in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. They formed an empire under Attila the Hun, who died in 453. Variants of the Hun name are recorded in the Caucasus until the early 8th century, the Huns were a confederation of warrior bands, ready to integrate other groups to increase their military power, in the Eurasian Steppe in the 4th to 6th centuries AD. Most aspects of their ethnogenesis are uncertain, walter Pohl explicitly states, All we can say safely is that the name Huns, in late antiquity, described prestigious ruling groups of steppe warriors. Jerome associated them with the Scythians in a letter, written four years after the Huns invaded the eastern provinces in 395. The equation of the Huns with the Scythians, together with a fear of the coming of the Antichrist in the late 4th century. This demonization of the Huns is also reflected in Jordaness Getica, written in the 6th century, otto J. Maenchen-Helfen was the first to challenge the traditional approach, based primarily on the study of written sources, and to emphasize the importance of archaeological research. Thereafter the identification of the Xiongnu as the Huns ancestors became controversial among some, the similarity of their ethnonyms is one of the most important links between the two peoples. A Sogdian merchant described the invasion of northern China by the Xwn people in a letter, Étienne de la Vaissière asserts both documents prove that Huna or Xwn were the exact transcriptions of the Chinese Xiongnu name. Christopher P. Atwood rejects that identification because of the very poor match between the three words. For instance, Xiongnu begins with a velar fricative, Huna with a voiceless glottal fricative, Xiongnu is a two-syllable word. However, according to Zhengzhang Shangfang, Xiongnu was pronounced in Late Old Chinese, the Chinese Book of Wei contain references to the remains of the descendants of the Xiongnu who lived in the region of the Altai Mountains in the early 5th century AD
6.
East Slavs
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The East Slavs are Slavic peoples speaking East Slavic languages. Formerly the main population of the state of Kievan Rus. Researchers know relatively little about the Eastern Slavs prior to approximately 859 AD, zealous Christian missions burned and destroyed all evidences of history of the people before that. The Eastern Slavs of these early times apparently lacked a written language, the few known facts come from archaeological digs, foreign travellers accounts of the Rus land, and linguistic comparative analyses of Slavic languages. Very few native Rus documents dating before the 11th century have survived, the earliest major manuscript with information on Rus history, the Primary Chronicle, dates from the late 11th and early 12th centuries. 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 East European Plain during the Migration Period. Between the first and ninth centuries, the Sarmatians, Huns, Alans, Avars, Bulgars, although some of them could have subjugated the regions 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, by the 8th century, the Slavs were the dominant ethnic group on the East European Plain. By 600 AD, the Slavs had split linguistically into southern, western, 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, the East Slavs flooded Eastern Europe in two streams. Another group of East Slavs moved from Pomerania to the northeast, the same Slavic population also settled the present-day Tver Oblast and the region of Beloozero. Having reached the lands of the Merya near Rostov, they linked up with the Dnieper group of Slavic migrants. Roughly in the period, the Ilmen Slavs and Krivichs were dominated by the Varangians of the Rus Khaganate. The earliest tribal centres of the East Slavs included Novgorod, Izborsk, Polotsk, Gnezdovo, archaeology indicates that they appeared at the turn of the tenth century, soon after the Slavs and Finns of Novgorod had rebelled against the Norsemen and forced them to withdraw to Scandinavia. The reign of Oleg of Novgorod in the tenth century witnessed the return of the Varangians to Novgorod. From this base, the mixed Varangian-Slavic population launched several expeditions against Constantinople, at first the ruling elite was primarily Norse, but it was rapidly Slavicized by the mid-century. Sviatoslav I of Kiev was the first Rus ruler with a Slavonic name, the disintegration, or parcelling of the polity of Kievan Rus in the 11th century resulted in considerable population shifts and a political, social, and economic regrouping. This article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress Country Studies website http, //lcweb2. loc. gov/frd/cs/
7.
Khazars
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The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people, who created what for its duration was the most powerful polity to emerge from the break-up of the Western Turkic Kaganate. For some three centuries the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea, the alliance was dropped around 900. Between 965 and 969, the Kievan Rus ruler Sviatoslav I of Kiev conquered the capital Atil, the native religion of the Khazars is thought to have been Tengrism, like that of the North Caucasian Huns and other Turkic peoples. The polyethnic populace of the Khazar Khaganate appears to have been a multiconfessional mosaic of pagan, Tengrist, Jewish, Christian and this theory still finds occasional support, but most scholars view it with scepticism. The theory is associated with antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Gyula Németh, following Zoltán Gombocz, derived Xazar from a hypothetical *Qasar reflecting a Turkic root qaz- being an hypothetical velar variant of Common Turkic kez-, louis Bazin derived it from Turkic qas- on the basis of its phonetic similarity to the Uyğur tribal name, Qasar. András Róna-Tas connects it with Kesar, the Pahlavi transcription of the Roman title Caesar, D. M. Dunlop tried to link the Chinese term for Khazars to one of the tribal names of the Uyğur Toquz Oğuz, namely the Gésà. One method for tracing their origins consists in analysis of the possible etymologies behind the ethnonym Khazar itself. The tribes that were to comprise the Khazar empire were not a union, but a congeries of steppe nomads and peoples who came to be subordinated. They appear to stem from Mongolia and South Siberia in the aftermath of the fall of the Hunnic/Xiōngnú nomadic polities, moving west, the confederation reached the land of the Akatziroi, who had been important allies of Byzantium in fighting off Attilas army. An embryonic state of Khazaria began to form sometime after 630, Göktürk armies had penetrated the Volga by 549, ejecting the Avars, who were then forced to flee to the sanctuary of the Hungarian plain. The Āshǐnà clan whose tribal name was Türk appear on the scene by 552, by 568, these Göktürks were probing for an alliance with Byzantium to attack Persia. Both briefly challenged Tang hegemony in eastern Turkestan, to the West, two new nomadic states arose in the meantime, Old Great Bulgaria under Kubrat, the Duōlù clan leader, and the Nǔshībì subconfederation, also consisting of five tribes. The Duōlù challenged the Avars in the Kuban River-Sea of Azov area while the Khazar Qağanate consolidated further westwards, led apparently by an Āshǐnà dynasty. The Qağanate of the Khazars thus took out of the ruins of this nomadic empire as it broke up under pressure from the Tang dynasty armies to the east sometime between 630–650. According to Omeljan Pritsak, the language of the Onoğur-Bulğar federation was to become the lingua franca of Khazaria as it developed into what Lev Gumilev called a steppe Atlantis, Khazaria developed a Dual kingship governance structure, typical among Turkic nomads, consisting of a shad/bäk and a qağan. The emergence of this system may be deeply entwined with the conversion to Judaism, particularly elaborate rituals accompanied a royal burial. At one period, travellers had to dismount, bow before the rulers tomb, such a royal burial ground is typical of inner Asian peoples
8.
Golden Horde
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The Golden Horde was a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire after 1259 it became a functionally separate khanate and it is also known as the Kipchak Khanate or as the Ulus of Jochi. After the death of Batu Khan in 1255, his dynasty flourished for a century, until 1359. The Hordes military power peaked during the reign of Uzbeg, who adopted Islam, the territory of the Golden Horde at its peak included most of Eastern Europe from the Urals to the Danube River, and extended east deep into Siberia. In the south, the Golden Hordes lands bordered on the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, the khanate experienced violent internal political disorder beginning in 1359, before it briefly reunited under Tokhtamysh. However, soon after the 1396 invasion of Timur, the founder of the Timurid Empire, at the start of the 15th century the Horde began to fall apart. By 1466 it was being referred to simply as the Great Horde, within its territories there emerged numerous predominantly Turkic-speaking khanates. These internal struggles allowed the northern state of Muscovy to rid itself of the Tatar Yoke at the Great stand on the Ugra river in 1480. The Crimean Khanate and the Kazakh Khanate, the last remnants of the Golden Horde, in any event, it was not until the 16th century that Russian chroniclers begin explicitly using the term Golden Horde to refer to this particular successor khanate of the Mongol Empire. The first known use of the term, in 1565, in the Russian chronicle History of Kazan, applied it to the Ulus of Batu and its left wing was referred to as the Blue Horde in Russian chronicles and as the White Horde in Timurid sources. Western scholars have tended to follow the Timurid sources nomenclature and call the left wing the White Horde, the khanate apparently used the term White Horde to refer to its right wing, which was situated in Batus home base in Sarai and controlled the ulus. However, the designations Golden Horde, Blue Horde, and White Horde have not been encountered in the sources of the Mongol period. At his death in 1227, Genghis Khan divided the Mongol Empire amongst his four sons as appanages, Jochi was the eldest, but he died six months before Genghis. In 1235, Batu with the great general Subedei began an invasion westwards, first conquering the Bashkirs, from there he conquered some of the southern steppes of present-day Ukraine in 1237, forcing many of the local Cumans to retreat westward. The military campaign against the Kypchaks and Cumans had started under Jochi, by 1239 a large portion of Cumans were driven out of the Crimea peninsula, and it became one of the appanages of the Mongol Empire. The remnants of the Crimean Cumans survived in the Crimean mountains, moving north, Batu began the Mongol invasion of Rus and for three years subjugated the principalities of former Kievan Rus, whilst his cousins Möngke, Kadan, and Güyük moved southwards into Alania. Using the migration of the Cumans as their casus belli, the Mongols continued west, raiding Poland and Hungary and culminating in the battles of Legnica, in 1241, however, Ögedei Khan died in the Mongolia homeland. Batu turned back from his siege of Vienna to take part in disputing the succession, the Mongol armies would never again travel so far west
9.
Moldavia
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Moldavia is a historical region, and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river. The western half of Moldavia is now part of Romania, the eastern side belongs to the Republic of Moldova, the original and short-lived reference to the region was Bogdania, after Bogdan I, the founding figure of the principality. Dragoș was accompanied by his female hound called Molda, when reached the shores of an unfamiliar river. The dogs name would have given to the river and extended to the country. The old German Molde, meaning open-pit mine the Gothic Mulda meaning dust, dirt, a Slavic etymology, marking the end of one Slavic genitive form, denoting ownership, chiefly of feminine nouns. In several early references, Moldavia is rendered under the composite form Moldo-Wallachia, Ottoman Turkish references to Moldavia included Boğdan Iflak and Boğdan. See also names in other languages, the name of the region in other languages include French, Moldavie, German, Moldau, Hungarian, Moldva, Russian, Молдавия, Moldaviya, Turkish, Boğdan Prensliği, Greek, Μολδαβία. The inhabitants of Moldova were Christians, archaeological works revealed the remains of a Christian necropolis at Mihălășeni, Botoșani county, from the 5th century. The place of worship, and the tombs had Christian characteristics, the place of worship had a rectangular form with sides of 8 and 7 meters. Similar necropolis and place of worship were found at Nicolina, in Iași The Bolohoveni, the chronicle shows that this land is bordered on the principalities of Halych, Volhynia and Kiev. Archaeological research also identified the location of 13th-century fortified settlements in this region, Alexandru V. Boldur identified Voscodavie, Voscodavti, Voloscovti, Volcovti, Volosovca and their other towns and villages between the middle course of the rivers Nistru/Dniester and Nipru/Dnieper. The Bolohoveni disappeared from chronicles after their defeat in 1257 by Daniil Romanovichs troops, in the early 13th century, the Brodniks, a possible Slavic–Vlach vassal state of Halych, were present, alongside the Vlachs, in much of the regions territory. On the border between Halych and the Brodniks, in the 11th century, a Viking by the name of Rodfos was killed in the area by Vlachs who supposedly betrayed him. In 1164, the future Byzantine Emperor Andronikos I Komnenos, was prisoner by Vlach shepherds around the same region. In 1342 and 1345, the Hungarians were victorious in a battle against Tatar-Mongols, the Polish chronicler Jan Długosz mentioned Moldavians as having joined a military expedition in 1342, under King Władysław I, against the Margraviate of Brandenburg. In 1353, Dragoș, mentioned as a Vlach Knyaz in Maramureș, was sent by Louis I to establish a line of defense against the Golden Horde forces of Mongols on the Siret River and this expedition resulted in a polity vassal to Hungary, centered around Baia. His realm extended north to the Cheremosh River, while the part of Moldavia was still occupied by the Tatar Mongols. After first residing in Baia, Bogdan moved Moldavias seat to Siret, disfavored by the brief union of Angevin Poland and Hungary, Bogdans successor Lațcu accepted conversion to Roman Catholicism around 1370, but his gesture was to remain without consequences
