Romania EARLY HISTORY FROM PREHISTORY TO THE ELEVENTH CENTURY
Greek ruins at Istria
Courtesy Scott Edelman
Statue of Romulus and Remus, Cluj-Napoca
Courtesy Scott Edelman
Man first appeared in the lands that now constitute
Romania
during the Pleistocene Epoch, a period of advancing and
receding
glacial ice that began about 600,000 years ago. Once the
glaciers
had withdrawn completely, a humid climate prevailed in the
area and
thick forests covered the terrain. During the Neolithic
Age,
beginning about 5500 B.C., Indo-European people lived in
the
region. The Indo-Europeans gave way to Thracian tribes,
who in
later centuries inhabited the lands extending from the
Carpathian
Mountains southward to the Adriatic and Aegean Seas.
Today's
Romanians are in part descended from the Getae, a Thracian
tribe
that lived north of the Danube River.
Data as of July 1989
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