Migratory Indo-Europeans, who intermingle with native Neolithic peoples to form the Thracians, settle the Carpathian-Danube region, in which the future Romanian ethnic community will evolve.

The origins of the Thracians remain obscure, in absence of written historical records.

Evidence of proto-Thracians in the prehistoric period depends on remains of material culture.

It is generally proposed that a proto-Thracian people developed from a mixture of indigenous peoples and Indo-Europeans from the time of Proto-Indo-European expansion in the Early Bronze Age when the latter conquered the indigenous peoples around 1500 BCE.

The Thracian tribes in later centuries will inhabit 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.)