(...) Perhaps at the turns of the 3rd and the 2nd centuries BC, Slavs abandoned their first homeland at the Kazakh-Siberian border, crossed the Ural and started conquering the land located between these mountains and the middle Volga River, pushing away from that territory Ugro-Finnic tribes of the Ananin culture.
(...)
Finno-Ugric peoples from most ancient times until the 10th century lived in north-eastern Europe, from the western slopes of the Ural Mountains, across the Dvina River basin up to the northern coasts of the Baltic Sea. While nomadic tribes of Iranian origin - that is the Scythians, the Sarmatians, the Aorsi and the Alans - lived since the 7th century BC until the 4th century AD in the steppe zone in the south, extending from Kazakhstan to the Caspian and Black Sea steppes up to the mouth of the Danube.
In most of that area territories of Finno-Ugric and Iranian tribes were divided by space of more than a thousand kilometers and only in one place the distance decreased to 200-300 kilometers: between the middle Volga and the southern part of the Ural Mountains. At this longitude territory of Finno-Ugric settlement extended more to the south and reached the Kama and Belaya Rivers, and territory occupied by Iranian tribes extended up to the northern border of the steppe, which was roughly along the Samara River.
In the rest of Eastern Europe we cannot find another place, where territories inhabited by Ugro-Finnic and Iranian populations were so close to each other.
Therefore it seems that the only place where Slavs in their ancient past could live in close proximity to both Ugro-Finnic and Iranian tribes was the area located between the Ural and the middle Volga, in the north extending up to the lower Kama and in the south extending to the Samara and the border of the steppe. This is a territory of about 200 thousand square km - a land of forest and forest-steppe, with mostly black earth soils. That quite extensive area, equal to 2/3 of the area of modern Poland, could easily feed the Slavic ethnos, which by the end of the previous era (BC) numbered an estimated 200 - 300 thousand people.
Slavs had migrated there from the borderland between Kazakhstan and Russia, probably at the turns of the 3rd and the 2nd centuries BC, when chronicles recorded in Central Asia huge ethnic movements, caused by invasions by Mongolic and Iranian nomadic tribes from the east and from the south. (...)
This datation of the arrival of Slavs to the area between the Urals and the middle Volga seems to be indicated also by fact, that during the same time local archaeological culture, ascribed to Finno-Ugric population, which had been developing without interruption from the 8th century BC, known as Ananin culture, collapsed. It covered areas along the middle Volga, lower Kama and Belaya. Population of the Ananin culture were farmers, herders, hunters and fishers. It had the knowledge of smelting copper, bronze and iron. Weaving was quite well developed. Pottery was made of clay. Settlements were constructed near meanders of rivers, surrounded by earthwork ramparts, ditches and palisades.
The disappearance of the Ananin Culture might indicate that this area was subject to expansion of another people. That people could be Slavs who came from behind the Ural. The Ananin Culture was perhaps not completely destroyed by Slavs, but at least some of its elements had to be adopted by them, for example when it comes to agriculture, weaving, clay pottery, iron smelting, constructing earthwork ramparts, etc.
There is one more important evidence, which confirms the presence of Slavs in that area. This is the information noted by Claudius Ptolemy in his "Geography", written in the middle of the 2nd century. In part of "Geography" describing areas located between the Volga (Rha) and the Urals (Imaos), Ptolemy mentions a people living there, called "Suowenoi". It is surprising that most of historians are silent about this information and marginalize its important. And these few, who mention it, express a categorical view, that it is impossible that those people were Slavs, because according to them Slavs could not be living so far from the center of Europe, and therefore this name perhaps refers to some Finnic tribe (Suomi).
Even H. Łowmiański, who acknowledged, that the name could indeed mean Slavs, considered that the localization of their homeland (the Volga region) had to be a Ptolemy's mistake, commenting that: "Suowenoi, due to their geographical location, are unimportant for researchers of Slavic history as a historical hint" (Łowmiański, 1963, p. 176).
I disagree, I think that we should exclude the possibility of a mistake, because in the same part of Europe Ptolemy accurately located other peoples living in the 2nd century AD near the southern Urals, such as the Alans, the Alanorsi, or the Massagetae. Why should he be mistaken just in case of the Suowenoi?
From linguistic point of view, the name "Suowenoi" should undoubtedly be translated as Słowianie, or more procisely - as Słowienie. Archaic name Słowienie until nowadays has left its traces in names such as Slovenia, Slovensko, Słoweńcy. One of east Slavic tribes was also called Słowienie Ilmeńscy.
If we reject not supported by any evidence hypotheses associating Slavs with the Neuri of Herodotus (5th century BC), [etc.] (...), then this info about the Suowenoi is the first historical note, about which there is no doubt, that it refers to Slavs.
These evidences therefore indicate that the intermediary area, which was occupied by Slavs after their migration at the turns of the 3rd and the 2nd centuries BC out of Central Asia, but before their settlement in the basin of the middle Dnieper River, was the mentioned land between the middle Volga and the Urals.
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