The Dacian, Illyrian and Thracian peoples dominated the Balkans.
Their Indo-European languages give the names for Beskydy
mountains (Slovakia) and Carpathians and indicate the extent of
the area covered by these tribes. The first iron objects north
of the Alps appear in this period with the Hallstatt C culture
in Bohemia, upper Austria and Bavaria. From the 8th century the
Greeks traded beyond the Aegean and began to settle in these
areas, initially in Sicily and Italy and the northern shore of
the Aegean and a few around the Black Sea. The 7th century marks
the start of the Classical Greek civilisations in the southern
areas of modern Greece, although the Balkan and lower Danubian
regions were unaffected by the emerging Greek culture. The
Scythians crossed the steppes to the Black Sea and reached the
northern Balkans. It is not certain if they were Iranian,
Turkish or of some other origin, or combination of Indo-
European, Turkish, Uralic tribes. They lived in this area until
3rd century AD when the Huns arri