Two of the first human civilizations began in the Mediterranean area during the Bronze Age and through the Phoenician language and alphabets. Thessaly was home to an extensive Neolithic culture around 2500 BC. The end of Fourth Dynasty and start of Fifth Dynasty in Egypt when Pharaoh Shepseskaf died and Pharaoh Userkaf started to reign in 2494 BC. In the same century, it was the end of the Early Dynastic IIIa Period and beginning of the Early Dynastic IIIb Period in Mesopotamia. Mycenaean settlements have also been discovered, for example at the sites of Iolcos, Dimini and Sesklo (near Volos). Later, in ancient Greek times, the lowlands of Thessaly became the home of baronial families, such as the Aleuads of Larissa or the Scopads of Crannon. These baronial families organized a federation across the Thessaly region, later went on to control the Amphictyonic League in northern Greece.

The Thessalians were renowned for their cavalry.

During the Greco-Persian Wars (500 BC-448 BC) the Aleuads joined the Persians. They began with nearly the foundation of the Roman Republic but the ancient Sabines, an Italic tribe of ancient Italy, were in Latium before Rome was founded. In response to threats by the Sabines, Rome created the office of dictator. The Ionian Revolts were triggered by the actions of Aristagoras, the tyrant of the Ionian city of Miletus at the end of the 6th century BC and the beginning of the 5th century BC. They constituted the first major conflict between Greece and Persia. The yeare signifies the end of the Nordic Bronze Age civilization in Oscar Montelius periodization system and begins the Pre-Roman Iron Age. At the end of the 6th century BC, Darius the Great ruled over an immense realm, from western India to eastern Europe. Macedonian king Amyntas I became his vassal. His forces also crossed the Danube into Assyrian Scythia in Eurasia.

The location and extent of Scythia varied over time: Scythians variously inhabited: the Caucasus area, including Azarbaijan, Georgia and Turkmenistan, the Altay Mountains region where present-day Mongolia, China, Russia, and Kazakhstan come together, the southern Ukraine with the lower Danube river area and Bulgaria. The most significant Scythian tribes mentioned in the Greek sources resided in the steppe between the Dnieper and Don rivers. The Scythians possibly formed a branch of the Gimirru mentioned in Assyrian annals at approximately the same time (Ivancik), even though the ancient Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus describes the Kimmerioi or Cimmerians as a distinct tribe, the autochthonous population of the northern Black Sea coast, which the Scythians had expelled (Hist. 4.11-12).

In 148 BC the Romans formally incorporated Thessaly into the province of Macedonia, but in AD 300 Thessaly was made a separate province with its capital at Larissa. It remained as a part of the east Roman empire until the 13th century, when it was controlled by Vlach herdsmen (Great Walachia). In 1394 the Ottoman Empire assumed rule.

Wallachia was situated north of the Danube and south of the Carpathian Mountains. Its neighbors were Bulgaria, after that the Ottoman Empire to the south, Transylvania to the north-west and Moldavia to the north-east. The capital city changed over time, from Câmpulung to Curtea de Arges, then to Târgoviste and finally Bucharest.

In the second Dacian war (105 AD) the west of Oltenia became part of the Roman province of Dacia with the rest of Wallachia included in the Moesia Inferior province. The Roman fortification Limes (patrol road with wooden lookout towers and forts at intervals) were initially along the Olt (119 AD) and later in the 2nd century moved slightly east, from the Danube up to Rucar in the Carpathians mountains. The Roman line fell back to the Olt in 245 AD, and in 271 AD the Romans pulled out of the region.