Folia archeologica 27.
István Fodor: Az uráli és finnugor őshaza kérdése (Régészeti áttekintés)
160 I. FODOR East European forest zone no population migrations of importance. He locates the place of the Ugrian co-existence in the Volosovo culture, while he identifies the area, where the Proto-Hungarian ethnogenesis took place, with the wooded grassland and steppe region of the right banks of the Central Volga; later he attributes the Imenkovo culture of the third to the seventh centuries to them. 6 5 László's hypothesis is based primarily not on archaeological evidence but has been deducted from a bio-geographical stock of words. Recent research did not prove, though, his archaeological arguments in following important questions: 1) The peopling of the Ural region beganas early as the Middle Palaeolithic Age. 6 6 During the Mesolithic it had already a considerable population, 6 7 in the Early Neolithic - in the fourth millennium B. C. - it was, in relation to the conditions of the period, very densely populated, especially as for the zone east of the Ural. 6 8 This area is therefore not to be eliminated when searching for the original home of the Finno-Ugrians, referring to a late peopling of the Ural, as done by Gy. László. 2) The Swiderian culture can be brought in connection only with a later Comb- and Pit-Marked culture, namely that of the Volga-Oka region. This could not have belonged, though, to any Finno-Ugrian population, as its territory was occupied, about 2000 В. С., by the Volosovo people migrating there from the East, whose cultural traditions can be followed to later Finno-Ugrians. 09 3) On the forest zone of East Europe we have to count, in the Neolithic Age, with considerable migrations, the most significant of which was maybe the westward migration of the Volosovo people, mentioned before, accomplished in the Late Neolithic period. 4) Archaeological investigation, starting from a later period and proceeding backwards (the retrospective method) adds more and more data to the evidence that the ancestors of the Uralian, resp. Finno-Ugrian peoples lived about the Ural region as early as the beginning of the fourth millennium. A particularly important fact is that we can find the motifs of Uralian rock engravings from the fourth to the third millennia B. C. on objects of the contemporaneous local archaeological culture, primarly on pottery decorations, as well as in the Ob-Ugrian popular arts of a much later date. 7 0 5) The Uralian Neolithic culture, to be connected with a a Finno-Ugrian population, is not to be derived from the Swiderian culture of the Oka region. 7 1 6 5 _L ás^Jó, Gy., Őstörténetünk... 111-196.; Id., Über die Grundfragen der uralischen Urheimat. CIFU II. (Helsinki 1968) II. 35-40.; Id., К voprosu о formirovanii finno-ugrov. In: Problemy arheologii i drevnej istorii ugrov. (Moskva 1972) 7-9. 0 0 Bader, O. N., Le Paléolithique dans l'Oural et le peuplement du Nord. Trudy VIL MKAEN 5. (Moskva 1970) 385-390.; Id., New data on the original inhabitation of North-East Europe. Quartär 19(1968) 181-197.; Id., Drevnejsee zaselenije Severnoj Evropy celovekom v svete novyh dannyh. KSIA 126(1971) 3-13.; Fodor, I., Skizzen . . . 31-32. C 7 Matjrtsin, G. N., Mezolit Urala. In: Doklady i soobscenija arheologov SSSR. (Moskva 1966) 72-74.; Burov, G. M., Drevnij Sindor. (Moskva 1967) 6 8 Cernecov, V. N., Naskal'nye izobrazenija Urala. II. SAI V4-12. (Moskva 1971) 111. 6 9 Trefjakov, P. N., U istokov ... 82. ™Cernecov, V. N., Naskal'nye izobrazenija Urala. (Moskva 1964) 1: 19-27., II: 110-111.; Id., Ethn. 70(1959) 3-11. 7 1 Id., К voprosu о slozenii ural'skogo neolita. In: lstorija, arheologija i etnografija Sred nej Azii. In honour of S. P. Tolstov. (Moskva 1968) 41-53.; Bader, O. N., Ural'skij neolit. In: Kamennyj vek na territorii SSSR. MIA 166. (Moskva 1970) 157-171.; Id., Volgo-kamskaja etnokul'turnaja oblast' epohi neolita. MIA 172. (Moskva 1973) 105. - In accordance with the beforesaid the hypothesis of J. Harmatta, according to which the original home of the Finno-
