HLA-Antigens in the Romanian population.

D the first millennium B.C., the present territory of Romania was invaded by Thracians (I 2th century B.C.), Illyrians (750-450 B.C.), and Getae and Celts (300 B.C.). Dacians, the northern Thracians, are known from Greek sources of the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. In the period between 200 and 31 B.C., the Dacian state extended between the Tisza River and the lower Danube. In 85 A.O., the Roman emperor Domimitian's expedition against the Dacians consolidated his position north of the Danube. The complete conquest of Dacia followed two vigorous campaigns by the emperor Trajan (in 103 and 105106); the process of Romanization was swift. In Romania, Latin completely supplanted the Dacian and Thracian languages. In 214, Dacia was conquered by the Goths. The devastation of the Gothic empire by the Huns, 200 years later, followed by that of the Bulgars at the end of the 5th century and that of the Avars in the late 6th century, prepared the ground for a wide Slavic dissemination from their homeland north of the Carpathians in the Ukraine. During the I 0th13th centuries, small Romanian principalities of Russian Orthodox religion and Latin language were formed. After a brief period of unification and independence, the Southern (Valachia) and Eastern (Moldavia) principalities fell under Turkish occupation (beginning of the 17th century), while the central state of Transylvania was conquered by Hungary and then by Austria (1696). It was only in 1856