At this time, and for hundreds of years thereafter, the province was a magnet for settlement of Han Chinese from the north, who displaced and assimilated the original indigenous inhabitants, cleared forests and began farming rice in the valleys and plains.[10] The agricultural colonization of the lowlands was carried out in part by the Han empire, which managed river dikes to protect farmland from floods.[11] To this day many of the small villages in Hunan are named after the Han families who settled there. Migration from the north was especially prevalent during the Eastern Jin dynasty and the Northern and Southern dynasties periods, when nomadic invaders pushed these peoples south.