Protochronism (anglicized from the Romanian: Protocronism, from the Ancient Greek terms for "first in time") is a Romanian term describing the tendency to ascribe, largely relying on questionable data and subjective interpretations, an idealized past to the country as a whole.
While particularly prevalent during the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, its origin in Romanian scholarship dates back more than a century.
The term refers to perceived aggrandizing of Dacian and earlier roots of today's Romanians.
This phenomenon is also pejoratively labelled "Dacomania" or sometimes "Thracomania", while its proponents prefer "Dacology".