Folia archeologica 34.
Viola T. Dobosi: Adatok a tatai középsőpaleolit ipar értékeléséhez
44 ISTVÁN VÖRÖS Historically and within the Animal History there is only a short hiatus of five hundred years between the latest known lion remains and its earliest written record. Homer (Ilias XI. 548 pp) was the first to mention lion in the 8 t h century B.C. The realistic reference to a "yellow lion" suggests the observation of an existing animal. The Ilias contains historical and mythological knowledge and ideas born during Mycenaean times and formed through later centuries. So this reference to lions —as it became evident bv now on the basis of lion remains in the Peloponnesus —could be a tradition from the Mycenaean period based on reality. Three centuries later Herodotus (VII. 125 pp) mentions lions from Macedonia: between the rivers Acheolus (in Acharnania) and Nestos near Abdera (in Thrace) lions attacked the camels of Xerxes' land army transporting cereals in 480 B.C. At the turn of the 5 , h century B.C. Xenophon thinks of lion's occurrence in Southern Thrace as "it may have extended far over the Balkan range into the valley of the Danube within the historical period of Greece" 2 0 (Cyneg. XI.L.). In the 4 t h century B.C. Aristotle (Hist. anim. VI. 31., VIII. 28.) writes about "rare" lions. These authors are cited by Pliny, too (Hist. Nat. VIII. 17, 18.). The lion became extinct in Greece by all means in the 1 s t century A.D. 2 1 111. HOW DID THE LION GET INTO THE CARPATHIAN BASIN? The built-larger cave lion (Panthera (Leo) spelaea Goldf.) already lived in the Carpathian Basin 18-20 000 years ago. The age of the earliest lion find in the Carpathian Basin (Zengővárkony, Late Neolithic, Lengyel Cult.) corresponds to the age of the earliest lion find in the SW-Ukraine (Bolgrad, Late Neolithic, Gumelnita Cult.). Date ca. 3500 B.C. The age of the next remains in chronological succession is late Middle Copper Age (Tiszaföldvár, Tiszaluc), synchronized with Aegean EB II. 2 2 Date ca. 3000 B.C. They are succeeded by the lion remains in the SW-Ukraine and in the Carpathian Basin of the same age —early Late Copper Age [Mayaki, Late Tripolye Cult., Gyöngyöshalász, earlier Phase of Baden (Pécel) Cult.], synchronized with Aegean EB III. 2 3 Date approx. 2500 B.C. From the II n d millennium B.C. on lion remains are known so far only from the Peloponnesus. The lion, this new species of the subfossil wild fauna of Hungary arrived into the Carpathian Basin with the above-mentioned Late Neolithic-Copper Age "continental" (or Eastern European) faunal wave. Its earliest occurrence was the end of the Atlantic —the beginning of Subboreal, that is the end of faunistical Körös Phase —beginning of Bükk Phase. The lion migrated to the 2 0 Dawkins , W. —Sanford, tt 7., The British Pleistocene mammalia. Part III: British Pleistocene Felidae. (London 1869) 166. 2 1 Meyer , А. ВBis wie weit in der historischen Zeit zurück ist der Löwe in Griechenland nachweisbar? Der Zoologische Garten, Frankfurt a.M. 44,3(1903) 65—73. 2 2 Makkay, /., Acta Arch. Hung. 28(1976) 271. 2 3 Ibid.
