<P> The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia between the 4th century AD and the 6th century AD . According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part of Scythia at the time; the Huns' arrival is associated with the migration westward of a Scythian people, the Alans . By 370 AD, the Huns had arrived on the Volga, and by 430 the Huns had established a vast, if short - lived, dominion in Europe . </P> <P> In the 18th century, the French scholar Joseph de Guignes became the first to propose a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu people, who were northern neighbours of China in the 3rd century BC . Since Guignes' time, considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection . However, there is no scholarly consensus on a direct connection between the dominant element of the Xiongnu and that of the Huns . Priscus, a 5th - century Roman diplomat and Greek historian, mentions that the Huns had a language of their own; little of it has survived and its relationships have mainly been considered the Turkic or Mongolic languages . Numerous other ethnic groups were included under Attila the Hun's rule, including very many speakers of Gothic, which some modern scholars describe as a lingua franca of the Empire . Their main military technique was mounted archery . </P> <P> The Huns may have stimulated the Great Migration, a contributing factor in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire . They formed a unified empire under Attila the Hun, who died in 453; after a defeat at the Battle of Nedao their empire would quickly disintegrate over the next 15 years . Their descendants, or successors with similar names, are recorded by neighbouring populations to the south, east and west as having occupied parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia approximately from the 4th century to the 6th century . Variants of the Hun name are recorded in the Caucasus until the early 8th century . </P> <P> The Huns were "a confederation of warrior bands", ready to integrate other groups to increase their military power, in the Eurasian Steppe in the 4th to 6th centuries AD . Most aspects of their ethnogenesis (including their language and their links to other peoples of the steppes) are uncertain . Walter Pohl explicitly states: "All we can say safely is that the name Huns, in late antiquity, described prestigious ruling groups of steppe warriors ." </P>

What did the huns do to the roman empire