Some 42,000-year-old human remains were discovered in the "Cave With Bones", and being Europe’s oldest remains of Homo sapiens, they may represent the first modern humans to have entered the continent. The Neolithic Age Cucuteni area in Northeast Romania was the Western region of the earliest European civilization known as the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture.
The earliest written evidence of people living in the territory of the present-day Romania, the Getae, comes from Herodotus, in his Histories book IV (c. 440 BC). Territories located north of the Danube were inhabited by Dacians, which are considered a part of the Getae tribes mentioned by Herodotus, a branch of Thracian peoples. The Dacian kingdom reached its peak between 82–44 BC during the reign of Burebista.
Roman emperor Domitian led military campaigns in the region between 87–88 AD at Tapae. Roman incursions continued in 101–102 AD and 105–106 AD under Trajan, who successfully defeated Dacia and annexed its southwestern parts to the vast Roman Empire. The Dacian population subsequently underwent the ethno-linguistic process of Romanization and the conquered parts became an imperial province. Due to Dacia's rich ore deposits (especially gold and silver), Rome brought colonists from all over the empire. This introduced Vulgar Latin and started a period of intense romanization that would give birth to the Proto-Romanian language. During the 3rd century AD, with the invasions of migratory populations, the Roman Empire was forced to pull out of Dacia around 271 AD, making it the first province to be abandoned.
After the Roman army and administration left Dacia, the territory was invaded by various migratory populations including Goths, Huns, Gepids, Avars, Bulgars, Pechenegs, and Cumans. Several competing theories have been generated to explain the origin of modern Romanians. Linguistic and geo-historical analysis tend to indicate that Romanians have coalesced as a major ethnic
