Slavs in ancient times were a nomadic folk who wandered into what is today southwestern Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Serbia & Macedonia. Slavic languages are a sub-family of the Indo-European family of languages. The Slavic group of languages is deemed to be closer to the Baltic group than to any other group. It is for that reason that most scholars combine the 2 into the Balto-Slavic sub-family of the Indo-European languages. The total number of people who speak a Slavic language as their mother tongue is estimated at more than 300+ million, the vast majority of whom live in Russia, Belorus & Ukraine.
All Slavic tongues are believed to have evolved from a single parent language, taht is designated as the Proto-Slavic language, which split off much earlier probably around 2000-3000 B.C. from Proto-Indo-European. This specific language was original language ancestor of the members of today's Indo-European language family. It is what was spoken by such notables as King Phillip the Elder & King Phillip the Junior of Macedonia. It was Alexander the Great's native tongue until he went to Greece at the behest of his father, King Phillip the Junior. Proto-Slavic was most probably still common to all Slavs into the 1st Century AD & probably as late as the 8th Century AD. It was in the 9th Century AD that individual Slavic languages (actually at that point dialects) began to emerge.
Slavic life has been connected with water in various ways since the earliest beginnings. Water to drink has always been a necessity. water for farming irrigation is a given. Ancient Slavs were no different than any other people because they too built their settlements near lakes & rivers. Fish were an important food source combined with the vegetables & fruits gathered/harvested from the woodlands that also border waterways. Waterways became major transportation arteries for these ancient folk. Rough-hewn boats of several types & sizes made it easier as well as safer to travel over long distances rather than doing so by trekking through dense forests or across open plains that provide little or no cover & concealment. Boat building technology gradually improved & thus so did the canoe-like vessels of the Slavs. Originally these craft were pushed through the water with poles now they became considerably faster & more maneuverable with the introduction of oars and sails.
It was by the 7th Century that boat construction technology had adequately advanced to allow the Slavs to navigate rivers but to also venture out upon the open sea. They sailed to all over the Black Sea, through the Bosporus into the Aegean & Mediterranean Seas to Thessalonika, to Crete, the southern coast of Italy & at the walls of Constantinople, engaged the Byzantines in naval battles. Definitely the most famous of the ancient trade routes was the one called "from the Vikings to the Greeks." Kyiv & later Novgorod, principal cities of Ancient Kyivian Rus, flourished because they were located along the waterways of this major trading route. The establishment of trading posts, usually fortified, along the waterways was an economic boost for the Slavs & provided their nomadic neighbors such as the Khazars, Magyars & Pechenegs with places to exchange hides, food stuffs, etc. for salt, weapons, cloth, etc.
