Latvia
The history of Latvia begins when the area which is now Latvia was settled after the last glacial period around 9,000 BC. Ancient Baltic peoples appeared during the second millennium BC and four distinct tribal realms in Latvia's territories were identifiable towards the end of the first millennium AD. Latvia's principal river, the Daugava, was at the head of an important mainland route from the Baltic region through Russia into southern Europe and the Middle East used by the Vikings and later Nordic and German traders. Baltic Tribes, about 1200 CE.
In the early medieval period, the region's peoples resisted christianisation and became subject to attack in the Northern Crusades. Today's capital, Riga, founded in 1201 by Teutonic colonists at the mouth of the Daugava, became a strategic base in a papally-sanctioned conquest of the area by the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. It was to be the first major city of the southern Baltic and, after 1282, a principal trading centre in the Hanseatic league. By the 16th century Germanic dominance in the region was increasingly challenged by other powers.