According to Jordanes, the Goths entered Oium, part of Scythia, under the king Filimer, where they defeated the Spali. This migration account corresponds very well with the archaeological evidence. The name "Spali" may mean "the giants" in Slavic, and the Spali were thus probably not Slavs. In the early 3rd century AD, western Scythia was inhabited by the agricultural Zarubintsy culture and the nomadic Sarmatians. Prior to the Sarmatians the area had been settled by the Bastarnae, who are believed to have carried out a migration similar to the Goths in the 3rd century BC. Peter Heather considers the Filimer story to be at least partially derived from Gothic oral tradition. The fact that the expanding Goths appear to have preserved their Gothic language during their migration, suggests that their movement involved a fairly large number of people.