Erdély (Transylvania): a historic region in the southeastern part of the Carpathian Basin in what is today Romania, bounded by the Carpathian Mountains on the north and east, the Transylvanian Alps on the south, and the Bihor Mountains on the west. More and more of the region came to be inhabited by Magyars from the tenth century on; subsequently, Germans (Saxons) and Romanians also settled there. Transylvania was an independent administrative unit (a principality) several times throughout its history; it was a part of Hungary at various times, and, in the aftermath of the Second World War, has finally become a part of Romania. Its complex ethnic composition had made it a point of intersection of various folk cultures (Hungarian, Romanian, and German), as well as composite of diverse socio-economic formations (demesnial villages, free rural communities enjoying various prerogatives, and free towns). As the periphery of Hungarian folk culture, Transylvania has preserved-in its material culture, folk motifs, folk tales, language and customs-a great many archaisms that are telling vestiges of its former role as the point where the East (the Balkans) met the West.