Large territories in the Pannonian Basin were conquered after 568 by the nomadic Avars who had arrived from the Eurasian Steppes. The Slavs were forced to pay tribute to the Avars and to participate in their raids against the Byzantine Empire, the Franks and the Lombards. Even though the Avar settlement area stabilized on the Danube river in the early period of the khaganate (southern border of present-day Slovakia), a smaller (southernmost) part came under their direct military control after the fall of Samo's empire. In the late period of the khaganate, the Avars had already inclined to a more settled lifestyle and their co-existence with the local Slavs can be already characterized as some kind of cultural symbiosis.