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One
of the fossils found - a male, adult jawbone - has been dated to be
between 34,000 and 36,000 years old, which would make it one of the
oldest fossils found to date of modern humans in Europe. In 513 BC,
south of the Danube, the tribal confederation of the Getae were defeated
by the Persian Emperor Darius the Great during his campaign against
the Scythians (Herodotus IV). Over half a millennium later, the Getae
(also named Daci by Romans) were defeated by the Roman Empire under
Emperor Trajan in two campaigns stretching from 101 AD to 106 AD,
and the core of their kingdom was turned into the Roman province of
Dacia. The Gothic and Carpic campaigns in the Balkans during 238–269
AD(from the beginning of the period of military anarchy to the battle
of Naissus), forced the Roman Empire to reorganize a new Roman province
of Dacia south of the Danube, inside former Moesia Superior.
In either 271 or 275 the Roman army and administration left Dacia, which was invaded by the Goths. The Goths lived with the local people until the 4th century, when another nomadic people, the Huns, arrived. The Gepids and the Avars ruled Transylvania until the 8th century, after which the Bulgarians included the territory of modern Romania in their Empire until 1018. Transylvania was part of the Kingdom of Hungary from the 10-11th century until the 16th century, when the independent Principality of Transylvania was formed. The Pechenegs, the Cumans and Uzes were also mentioned by historic chronicles on the territory of Romania, until the founding of the Romanian principalities of Wallachia by Basarab I, and Moldavia by Dragos during the 13th and 14th centuries respectively. Several competing theories have been generated to explain the origin of modern Romanians. Linguistic and geo-historical analyses tend to indicate that Romanians have coallesced as a major ethnic group both South and North of the Danube. In the Middle Ages, Romanians lived in two distinct independent Romanian principalities: Wallachia (Romanian: Tara Româneasca - "Romanian Land"), Moldavia (Romanian: Moldova) as well as in the Hungarian-ruled principality of Transylvania. In
1475, Stephen the Great of Moldavia scored a temporary victory over
the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Vaslui. However, Wallachia and
Moldavia would come gradually under the suzerainty of the Ottoman
Empire during the 15th and 16th centuries (1476 for Wallachia, 1514
for Moldavia). As vassal tributary states they had complete internal
autonomy and an external independence which was finally lost in
the 18th century. One of the greatest Hungarian kings, Matthias
Corvinus (known in Romanian as Matei Corvin), who reigned from 1458-1490,
was born in Transylvania. He is claimed by the Romanians because
of his Romanian father, Iancu de Hunedoara (Hunyadi János
in Hungarian), and by the Hungarians because of his Hungarian mother.
Later, in 1541, Transylvania became a multi-ethnic principality
under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire following the Battle
of Mohács. Michael the Brave (Romanian: Mihai Viteazul) (1558-9
August 1601) was the Prince of Wallachia (1593-1601), of Transylvania
(1599-1600), and of Moldavia (1600). During his reign the three
principalities largely inhabited by Romanians were for the first
time united under a single rule. The
modern state of Romania was formed by the merging of the principalities
of Moldavia and Wallachia in 1859 under the Moldavian domnitor Alexandru
Ioan Cuza. Cuza led an agricultural reform distributing land to
poor and attracting enemies. Via a 1866 coup d'etat, also known
as the Abominable Revolution, Cuza was exiled and replaced by Prince
Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who became known as Prince Carol
of Romania. During the Russo-Turkish War, Romania fought on the
Russian side; in the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, Romania was recognized
as an independent state by the Great Powers. In return for ceding
to Russia the three southern districts of Bessarabia that had been
regained by Moldavia after the Crimean War in 1852, the Kingdom
of Romania acquired Dobruja. In 1881, the principality was raised
to a kingdom and Prince Carol became King Carol I. In August 1944, Antonescu was toppled and arrested by King Michael I of Romania. Romania changed sides and joined the Allies, but its role in the defeat of Nazi Germany was not recognized by the Paris Peace Conference of 1947. With the Red Army forces still stationed in the country and exerting de facto control, Communists and their allied parties claimed 90% of the vote, through a combination of vote manipulation, elimination and forced mergers of competing parties, establishing themselves as the dominant force. In 1947, King Michael I was forced by the Communists to abdicate and leave the country. Romania was proclaimed a republic, and remained under direct military and economic control of the USSR until the late 1950s. During this period, Romania's resources were drained by the "SovRom" agreements: mixed Soviet-Romanian companies established to mask the looting of Romania by the Soviet Union, in addition to excessive war reparations paid to the USSR. A large number of people were arbitrarily imprisoned for political, economic or unknown reasons: detainees in prisons or camps, deported, persons under house arrest, and administrative detainees. Political prisoners were also detained as psychiatric patients. Estimations vary, from 60,000, 80,000, up to two million. There were hundreds of thousands of abuses, deaths and incidents of torture against a large range of people, from political opponents to ordinary citizens. Most political prisoners were freed in a series of amnesties between 1962 and 1964. After the negotiated retreat of Soviet troops, in 1958, Romania started to pursue independent policies, including the condemnation of the Soviet-led 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia (Romania was the only Warsaw Pact country not to take part in the invasion), the continuation of diplomatic relations with Israel after the Six-Day War of 1967 (again, the only Warsaw Pact country to do so), the establishment of economic (1963) and diplomatic (1967) relations with the Federal Republic of Germany, and so forth. Also, close ties with the Arab countries (and the PLO) allowed Romania to play a key role in the Israel-Egypt and Israel-PLO peace processes (intermediated the visit of Sadat in Israel.) A short-lived period of relative economic well-being and openness followed in the late 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. As Romania's foreign debt sharply increased between 1977 and 1981 (from 3 to 10 billion US dollars), the influence of international financial organisations such as the IMF or the World Bank grew, conflicting with Nicolae Ceausescu's autarchic policies. Ceausescu eventually initiated a project of total reimbursement of the foreign debt (completed in 1989, shortly before his overthrow). To achieve this goal, he imposed policies that impoverished Romanians and exhausted the Romanian economy. He profoundly deepened Romania's police state and imposed a cult of personality which led to his overthrow and death in the Romanian Revolution of 1989. After
the fall of Ceausescu, the National Salvation Front (FSN), led by
Ion Iliescu and lacking a clear political platform, restored civil
order and took partial democratic measures. Several major political
parties of the pre-war era, such as the National Christian Democrat
Peasant's Party (PNTCD), the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the
Romanian Social Democrat Party (PSDR) were resurrected. After several
major political rallies, especially in January, in April 1990, a
sit-in protest contesting the results of the recently held parliamentary
elections began in the University Square, Bucharest. The protesters
accused the FSN of being made up of former Communists and members
of the Securitate. The protesters did not recognize the results
of the election, which they deemed undemocratic, and were asking
for the exclusion from the political life of the former high-ranking
Communist Party members. The protest rapidly grew to become an ongoing
mass demonstration (known as the Golaniad). The peaceful demonstrations
degenerated into violence. After the police failed to bring the
demonstrators to order, Ion Iliescu called on the "men of good
will" to come and defend the Bucharest and State institutions.
Coal miners of the Jiu Valley answered the call and arrived in Bucharest
on June 14. Their violent intervention is remembered as the June
1990 Mineriad.
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