Romania

Romania (Romanian: România /ro.mɨˈni.a/) is a country in Southeastern Europe. Romania borders Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and Moldova to the northeast, and Bulgaria to the south. more...

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Romania has a stretch of sea coast along the Black Sea, and the eastern and southern Carpathian mountains run through its center.

Historic Bucharest (Romanian: Bucureşti /bu.kuˈreʃtʲ/ (help·info)) is the country's capital and largest city. Romania has been an active member of NATO since 2004, and is also an acceding country to the European Union. The EU Accession Treaty was signed in early 2005, and Romania is due to join the European Union on January 1, 2007. Starting on January 1, 2007, Romania will have the seventh largest population and the ninth largest territory in the EU.

Name

The name of Romania (România) comes from Român ("Romanian"), which is a derivative of the word Romanus ("Roman") from Latin.

The fact that Romanians refer to themselves using a derivative of Romanus (Romanian: Român/Rumân) is mentioned in scholarly works as early as the 16th century by many authors, among them Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia.

The oldest surviving document written in the Romanian language is a 1521 letter (known as "Neacşu's Letter from Câmpulung") which notifies the mayor of Braşov about the imminent attack of the Ottoman Turks. This document is also notable for having the first occurrence of "Rumanian" in a Romanian written text, Wallachia being here named "the Rumanian land" - Ţeara Rumânească (modern Romanian Ţara < 1521 Romanian Ţeara < Latin Terra = "land").

History

Prehistory

The teritory of Romania has been inhabited by different groups of people since prehistory. 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 the oldest fossil found to date of modern humans in Europe.

Dacia

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.93). 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 to 106, 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 (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.

Read more at Wikipedia.org