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The "Proto"-Baltic Middle Dnieper & Fatyanovo-Balanovo cultures, 3200 -1800 BCE, were Northern extensions of the Corded Ware culture. There were really quite a few Baltic speaking cultures, the Littoral Piemare by the Baltic coast, the Trzciniec culture in the West, the Middle Dnieper in the middle, the Fatyanovo-Balanovo in the East. To the South of these bordered the Milograd culture. Beyond Milograd were the non-Baltic Indo-European Yamna and Proto-Slavic Komarov culture horizons. Excavations between the rivers Orel' and Samara have uncovered burials of a syncretic nature that attest contacts between the spheres of the Corded Ware and Yamna cultures. It may indicate early contacts between polyethnic Proto-Indo-Iranians and the ancestors of the Balts. These cultures migrated from the Strednij Stog culture (4500-3350), which in turn evolved from the Khvalynsk and nearby Samara PIE epoch homeland culture (5500-5000 BCE) on the Volga River. The nearby Finnic Erza / Moksha (Mordvin) language group has loanwords from Indo-Iranian, East Baltic, and Tocharian.*

Most migrations were often due to prolonged climatic changes, or population pressure on natural resources. The migrations by each group resulted in different ethnic assimilations during the migrations, and even more so at the eventual settlement regions. From the Samara culture to the present, the languages were multi-ethnic in various degrees. The divergence of language is usually happening while there is also a convergence of languages. Europe today is like an unmarked ancient sack of mixed genetic seeds.

The Sudovians (Yotvingians), Galindians, Pomesanians, and various Prussians together formed a closely related Baltic language group known as the Western Balts (Trzciniec and Littoral Piemare cultures), to which one should also include the ancient Curonians. The languages of both the Western and Eastern Balts (Lithuanian and Latvian) evolved from the Early-Baltic languages that migrated (each differently) from the Strednij Stog culture horizon. These early Baltic language settlement areas of which (the lower reaches of the Vistula, Daugava, the Nemunas basin, the upper reaches of the Dnieper & even to the Urals) - is known to have developed into the (1) Early Baltic Area of Central dialects and (2) Early Baltic Area of Peripheral dialects. The Sudovians and Prussians can be regarded as links in a chain of this latter group, while the Lithuanians and Latvians are considered to be the remnants of a more Central Early-Baltic Area. The Eastern most dialects of the Eastern Early-Baltic area (Fatyanovo-Balanovo) did not survive to be documented beyond hydronyms and archaic loanwords in Finnic languages ( also shaping Russian dialects). From reconstructions from the many loanwords in Uralic by linguists, one might gather that the languages of the Fatyanovo-Balanovo Balts resembled a very archaic ( circa 2,500 BCE) Latgalian. These are the "D" Balts of Mažiulis. Some of these Eastern Balts by the Ural mountains evidently merged culturally with, or extended to the nearby polyethnic Abashevo culture, which became a component of the Sintashta culture, later becoming the more conservative of dialects to Pre-BMAC Proto-Indo-Aryan (Proto-Vedic). Some Abashevo pottery looks quite similar to Fatyanovo/Balanovo, which indicates assimilation of some Baltic culture into it's ethnogenesis. The Southern most peripheral Baltic dialects were the Milograd Culture, which later assimilated with migrating Slavic speakers.

Linguistically speaking, the ancestors of the West Balts were the Pre-Baltic Mazovia-Podlasie / Lublin groups of the Trzciniec culture along the Bug river basin, which bordered the Komarov (Proto-Slavic) culture of the Podolian Uplands further to the South. The Trzciniec ("Streaked" pottery) culture was related to the Komarov culture, but different, as ceramics, metalwork, hydronyms, and burial rites indicate. This difference can be seen in the word for man's best friend, "dog ", where West Baltic had sunis vs. Old Church Slavic pьsъ, or "rock" - Baltic akmō / ašmō vs. O.C. Slavic kamy, and with the disparity of equine or copper words. The older relatedness is illustrated by the word for "name" - West Baltic emenis, Slavic imę, and Albanian emen vs. East Baltic Lithuanian vardas.

The Trzciniec culture gave way to the later Pomeranian culture horizon. The West Baltic dialect flowed North with migrations and trade to Coastal Balts. Even as late as the Early Iron Age (600 BCE), the southern limit of the large Sudovian culture territory bordered the Slavic/Scythian Chernoles culture. Scythian (Ossetic) and Slavic isoglosses can be illustrateded in Ossetic terminology of agriculture ( yoke, harvest, reaping-hook ) - in somatic terminology ( ear ), and in kinship ( sister, brother, mother, father, mother and father-in-law ).

According to Herodotus (approx 450 BCE) the Neuri  ( Νέυροι ) were a tribe living North of the Tyres (Dneister river), and the furthest nation beyond the Scythian farmers along the course of the river Hypanis (Bug river). The Bug river meets the Naura (Baltic name for the Narew) river. The Naura river leads one to Galinda and Suduva. Since trade increased recognition, the Neuri of Herodotus were possibly related to the Galindians and Sudovians. Herodotus also mentions the wild white horses nearby that grazed by a great lake, which scholars today suggest are the Podlesie marshes by the Bialowieza Forest. Yotvingian Tarpans from the Bialowieza Forest seasonally faded to near white in Winter. In 500 BCE, Eastern Europe climate was much cooler and wetter. There is still a town in Poland named Nur ( Νυρ) { 52° 40' 0" N, 22° 18' 0" E } along the upper Bug River, near the Bialowieza Forest. The Nurzec river runs nearby, and the local district currently bears the river's name. Balts traditionally take ethnonyms from local hydronyms. The Baltic verbal roots *"nur-" to immerse or *"niur-" to get murky may be sources of the local hydronym. Archaeologists have excavated a fortified settlement and an open settlement near Moloczki Poland, by the Nurzec river. There are probably many more yet unexcavated in "Ziemia Nurska", as the area is known as.

Thus, the Western Balts should include the Sudovians ( Яцьвягі ), Galindians, Pomesanians, and various Prussians, and also the Curonians, the former comprising the Southern group, and the latter,  the Northern group. This explains the close similarity between Sudovian ( Yotvingian ), Galindian,  Pomesanian, and Prussian.

The Old Prussian Sembian dialect, though, exhibits a prolonged influence from the nearby Curonians when compared to the more distant Pomesanian or Sudovian. The Sembian dialect of the Old Prussian Catechisms has "muti, tawas" (mother, father) whereas the Pomesanian of the Elbing Vocabulary has "mothe, towis". The chronicled Sudovian "Occopirmus" similarly differs from the Catechism Sembian "ucka-". Further inland away from coast and Curonians, we do find Prussian "Tlokunpelk" - Bears' Marsh. Galindians did not historically border the Curonians.

The four cases of West-Baltic (Prussian, Sudovian, & Galindian) declension are not an innovation but an archaic feature, uniting West Baltic with Germanic and Greek. Only nominative, genitive, dative and accusative forms have constant intercrossing functions in various Indo-European languages, while forms used for the instrumental or locative cases (traditionally declared to be "Common Indo-European"), have related functions: e.g. the IE *"-ois" may occur in the instrumental case in one language and in the locative case in other ones, or *"-ō" / (apophonically) "-ē " occurs as "-āt" in the Indo-Iranian ablative and as "-it" in the Hittite instrumental. Such intercrossing elements were used for semi-paradigmatic adverbial forms, differently paradigmatized in the various Indo-European languages. (V. Toporov, V. J. Mažiulis)

Some very archaic lexical differences exist between the Western Baltic dialects and the Central Baltic dialects. The word for "fire" is just such an example. The Western Balts used the word "panu", whereas the Central Balts used the word (Lith.) "ugnis".  Another example is the word for "wheel". The Western Balts used the word "kelan", whereas the Central Balts used the word (Lith.) "ratas".  These words have cognates in other ancient Indo-European languages. That such archaic diversity of basic terminology existed within "Proto"-Baltic" illustrates the antiquity of the West / East Baltic dialect areas inherited from the late Stredny Stog horizon (4500-3350 BCE) into the Corded Ware horizon.

Another key feature of West Baltic is the nominative singular neuter gender ending in [ -n ]. This is noted in such words as kelan (wheel), azeran (lake), and dadan (milk). There are also many neuter gender words that end in [ -u ], such as panu (fire) and peku (livestock), as well as alu (mead). Lithuanian still has the neuter gender in some adjectives ending in -a, -ia, or -u. For example, "Šalta" (It is cold) [ re: neuter "vaška" beeswax ].

Another feature of West Baltic is the Genitive singular declensional ending in [ -as' ] for words that end in [ -as ] or [ -an ] in the Nominative case. Hittite also shared this archaic feature. This declensional ending also changes the stress of the accent to the end syllable, as in many cognate Vedic words.  This generalized declensional feature is noted in a word like Nominative singular pedan (ploughshare), Genitive singular pedas', or in the West Baltic Genitive singular Deivas' (God's). The above unique features of West Baltic are relics from the Proto-Indo-European Stredny Stog horizon (4500-3350 BCE).

West Baltic has the same four nominal accent classes as does Lithuanian, but it has retained the original accentual state of Baltic ( an acute rising accent and a circumflex falling accent). The first class is the acute barytone paradigm. The second is the circumflex barytone paradigm. Thirdly, the acute mobile paradigm. Lastly, the circumflex mobile paradigm.

The high incidence of Y chromosomes from the haplogroup N1c suggest long term relations and admixture with Finnic neighbors, which may have had a conservative influence on the Baltic dialects and speakers. The divergence of language is usually happening while there is also a convergence of languages. The contemporary Balt-Finn mixed population reflects the ancient INDO-URALIC Proto-language nicely.