History of Negotin - glimpse at the past
LOOK IN THE PAST OF NEGOTIN
’’One piece of land between the Timok, Danube, Kljuc and Porec mountains. In Krajina there is about fifty villages, but not all Serbian. There are also Wallachian villages. In Krajina is town Negotin, the old walls in Prahovo (on Danube), the spring Caricina, river Zamna, and small monastery nearly Negotin’’ Thus wrote Vuk Karadzic in 1813.
Traces of Neolitic man that have been found on the banks of the Danube in the villages Prahovo, Dusanovac and Radujevac, testify that this area was inhabited in the Stone Age. Research results of the archeological materials found in Lepenski Vir, tell us that people lived on the banks of the Danube in Djerdap, six thousand years ago. Their culture was very specific and developed. Many civilisations lived here during the past. They progressed, developed and vanished. Many informations about them were lost in time, but Djerdap area was always the bridge between Wallachian valey and Timok valley.
At the time of the great migrations of the people, various tribes were coming from the east, leaving the chaos behind them.
Trachians and Illyrians (Triballis) were the first inhabitants of Danube basin. But, territory of Krajina Negotin was also invaded by Celts, newcomers from Dacia.
Romans had conquered these territories in the first century A.C and during few centuries, with variable war fortune, defended this territory from Goths, Sarmats, Slavs and others.
Byzantine rulers, incapable to deal with the invasions, changedtheir tactics toward Slavs. Justinianan I , had alowed some Slovenian tribes to inhabite some parts of the region from the river Morava to the Black sea. On the teritory of the “Negotinska Krajina” and along the river Timok, the first Slavs were the tribes “NEGOCS and TIMACS“
In the medievel history of today’s Krajna, the battle between Byzantium and Bulgaria was one of the most significant moments in the history of this region. In the beginning of the XIII century this region was under the jurisdiction of the Serbian king Milutin.
