Emberelődök nyomában. Az őskor emlékei Északkelet-Magyarországon (Miskolc, 2001)

IDEGENNYELVŰ ÖSSZEFOGLALÓK Ringer Árpád

THE PALAEOLITHIC OF BORSOD-ABAŰJ-ZEMOLÉN COUNTY Resume by Árpád RINGER Main events in the history of Palaeolithic research in the county Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county is one of the largest counties in Hungary. It is an important area for the history of the Old Stone Age because between 1891 and 1906 Miskolc, the county seat, and the neighbouring Bükk mountains were the places where the scientific research of the Old Stone Age had been born and flourished in our country. Up to now this region remained the part of the country where the largest quantity of information had been collected from on the age of early hunting-gathering-fishing societies. The beginnings of prehistoric studies in Hungary go back as far as the first years of the 18th century when the interest of our naturalists had turned towards caves and the paleontological remains or chipped or polished stone tools which came to light from them. In the 19th century this general interest towards dragon holes and thunderbolt-caves led to the separation of some scientific fields in Hungary, namely that of paleontolgy, speleology and later of cave archeology . In the sixties of the 19th century the geologist József Szabó urged researches to study the remains of Early Man in Hungary both in his lectures and in his papers, though he himself remained sceptic about the realisation. From the sixties of the 19th century till 1891 a long series of sterile disputes were held on the possible existence Early Man in Hungary. In 1981 a strange find came to light from the inner part of the town Miskolc, the so called Bársony-ház axes /photo 4/ which Ottó Herman had got for studying. These finds had stimulated a sharp debate on the age of the tools. It lasted for 15 years and was similar to the one connected with Boucher de Perthes in France. Originally Ottó Herman determined the Bársony-ház tools as of Chellean types, that is belonging to the beginning ofthe Paleolithic. For the lack of paleontological finds the geologist Gyula Halaváts rejected Herman's age determination claiming that the Bársony-ház finds, in the direct neighbourhood of the Szinva brook could have been only in a Holocene deposit. In 1906 opened a prospect to Herman to invite two geologist experts to prove the authenticity of the finds and their Pleistocene age. They were Károly Papp and Ottokár Kadic who were involved also in the starting of systematic excavations inn the caves of the Bükk mountains. According to Papp's investigations the Bársony-ház finds might belong to the Ice Age, however, it was not until 1990 when it was possible to prove that the "axes" were related to that 60- 70 000 year old loess which belongs to the beginning of the last, Weichsel, glaciation and which was deposited on one of the Pleistocene gravel terraces of the Szinva. In 1906 Ottokár Kadic started excavations in the Szeleta cave in the neighbourhood of Miskolc. Those finely elaborated "laurel -leaf -shaped spear heads" which undoubtedly proved the existence of Early Man in Hungary came to light from that cave in 1907 . In the meantime in 1899 the Borsod-Miskolc Museum was established in Miskolc to support researches related to the Early Man and his age. In 1953 the museum was named after Ottó Herman. Y et in the history of Hungarian researches another difficulty