Fertile land, plenty of water and mild climate have drawn people to the plain of Vojvodina from long ago. Many tribes and nations have left their traces, and their mutual conflicts and influences have left marks in the historical periods.
     People had been coming to this plain ever since the paleolitic period. They had stayed in the plain for short periods of time, hunting for mammoths. First permanent residents, farmers and cattle breeders, populated Vojvodina in neolite, between 6000 BC and 3500 BC.
     The exploitation of metal begins round 3800BC. That caused changes in the way of living and in the following 1800 years the communities become more and more heterogenous; the differences based on property. The patriarchy replaces matriarchy. The cultures of the copper age, eneolite, alternated. Copper was used not only for ornaments, but for new tools, too. The ceramics decorated with bareliefs also originates from this period. The most interesting excavations from this perod are made in Gomolava.
     The bronze age lasts till the beginning of the use of iron, from 1800 BC till 500 BC. The cultures of Mokrin, Vinkovci and Belegis left the significant mark in this period.
     The Celtic warrior tribes, that had come from the Western Europe, brought the Latin culture to this region. After their defeat at Delphi (278-279 BC), some of those tribes vanished, while the Scordiscs, a branch of the Celtic tribe Boie, permanently inhabited the territory between the rivers Danube and Sava. The iron age lasts from IV cent. BC til the first half of the I cent. BC. The Latin culture brought the better arms and tools, various kinds of jewelry and pottery made on potter's wheel. People had lived in fortificated villages, one of which was Zidovar in the southeastern Banat. The commerce was developed, and the money that was minted became the measure of value. People traded between very distant areas.
     In the second half of the I cent. BC, the Romans come to Vojvodina and conquer Srem and the southern parts of banat. Other regions (Backa, and the northern Banat) where Dacians and Yazigs dwelt, also suffered the influence of Roman culture through trade connections. The Roman influence persisted in the greatest part of Vojvodina for almost whole 500 years of their reign. Srem became an important Roman province with the strong military and civil power. Romans developed literacy, built cities and roads, intensified agriculture, brough vine raising to Fruska Gora, encouraged commerce and trade, they even had a fleet on Sava and Danube, which was of great importance for their preservation of the teritory and for new conquests.
     The city of Sirmium (today the teritory of Sremska Mitrovica), which was called the "myriad, glorious mother of cities", became a metropolis of the Roman empire at the turn of the III and IV cent. AD. The remains of the luxurious pallaces, decorated with frescoes and mosaics, monumental public bath, great forum and the Emperors pallace were discovered here. The city was protected by walls and it had plumming and drenage systems, a mint, a weawing workshop, a workshop for arms construction, temples, a theatre, and an amphitheatre. Sirmium was a place of birth of many Roman emperors; Aurelian, Probus, Decius, Traianus, Maximinus and Gracium. The intruders Ingenius and Realianus declared themselves emperors in this city and many other Roman emperors spent some time in Sirmium. Some remains of the Roman city of Basiena have been preserved near Donji Petrovci in Srem, too.