The history of Iranian peoples in Europe stretches back as far as 750 BC, when a Proto-Scythian culture thrived in Eastern Europe (mostly modern-day Ukraine and Russia). "Iranian peoples" is a collective term comprising several ethnic groups whose common origin stems from the Proto-Iranians of Central Asia, and having little to do with the modern state Iran, much as "Germanic" is not directly related to the modern state of Germany. By the 5th-6th century AD, all the Iranian peoples in Europe had been assimilated and absorbed into the Early Slavs and Goths.