transformation was due to the strong influence of the culture of the Western Balts (of the Zarubintsy culture), which moved from the territory of what is now Poland deep into the Dnieper basin as early as the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. Moshchiny culture is considered to be the ancestor of the Eastern Galindians, who lived in the lands near Moscow and within the Protva river basin. Slavic invasion In the middle of the 1st millennium, Slavs began to invade the Baltic territory of the Dnieper Balts along the Dnieper and its tributaries. In the 7th century, the Slavs, that previously only lived in Right-bank Ukraine, started invading the Baltic lands in the eastern Dnieper basin. Since the 7th and 8th centuries, the linguistic and cultural Slavicisation of Dnieper Balts was accelerated by the conversion of the multilingual tribes living in Ruthenia to Eastern Orthodoxy. By the early 9th century, only small numbers of Slavs had gone into Upper Dnieper and the majority were still Balts, with the Slavs mostly settling near Gnezdovo. Some researchers believe that after the Christianization of Kievan Rus' in 988, part of the Dnieper Balts retreated westwards, eventually merging into Lithuanians and Latgalians. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the majority of the Dnieper Balts were separated from the other Balts living in the west by Slavic migrants moving north on the Dnieper banks. In the 11th and 12th centuries, out of the Dnieper Balts, only the Eastern Galindians remained undestroyed by the eastern Slavs. The Lithuanian professor Zigmas Zinkevičius writes that:It is thought that the Dnieper Balts, just as the other Balts living to the east from present-day Lithuania and Latvia, had an important influence on the Slavs who moved to these lands and the formation of East Slavic as a separate linguistic group. Religion According to some researchers, the pagan religion of the Dnieper Balts included the veneration of pillars with bear heads. References Sources See also Galindians Galindians and Gelonians Ancient peoples Historical Baltic peoples