Folia archeologica 36.

JEWELRY, MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 9 It seems quite obvious that this carefully manufactured, oval bone plate may symbolize the mythic relations of the Tata hunters with their most important source of food, i. e. mammoth. Since the special literature of totemism (a belief of the existence of ancestral spirits in the shape of animals, plants, and sometimes in natural phenomena) is so vast that a survey of it is difficult even for the experts. Here we do not attempt to give a full discussion of the subjects. We try to deal instead only with those facts which are essential for understanding. The Australian aborigines have longest preserved most primitive way of life preceding European type civilization in its most intact form. The whole life of the Arunta people living in the arid semidesert area in the middle of the continent is closely allied with churingas or ancestor pebbles. Churingas symbolically mark the belonging to a smaller community. This community includes not only living persons but also dead ancestors through generations, by the medium of these very churingas, carefully preserved in sacred places, descendants, too. At the painful iniciation ceremonies churingas represent the spirits and sexual power of ancestors while bull-roarers raise the voice of the dead.

2 In Hungary G. Róheim expert in this ethnological field. V. Zolnay, discussing the Paleolithic origins of arts, rejects those opinions which attribute to these objects a certain role in fertility magic among hunting-gathering peoples. According to him, the development of fertility cults requires a more advanced level of economy. He thinks, exactly on the basis of Middle-Australian analogies, that these objects are valuable not only because of the work put in to make them or because of their rarity or beauty, but also because they have "a plus spiritual value imagined in them". This special value can symbolize the life of ancestors and their influence on living persons, their descendants. There are several objects known from the final Paleolithic, which on the basis of direct Australian — Eastern African analogies, could be nothing else but churingas, e. g. the painted pebbles of the Azilian culture.

3 If we accept the existence of this very early, Middle Paleolithic totemism, we have to recognize in it the more rare (earlier?) variant of this belief, i. e. in our case the totem is far from being under hunting prohibition, on the contrary, it is the most important, basic source of food. Thus the totem animal is the one who actually supports the community. The animal so to speak — guarantees its survival. Their evident relationship hardly needs any proof; thus the animal is worthy of honour. Amulet

4 In his monography written on the Tata site the author considered a Nummulites with a cross-like sign engraved on it as an amulet. On the surface of this object two lines cut each other almost perpendicularly. The majority of researchers call to question whether it actually belonged to the Middle Paleolithic site and its artificial character. Unfortunately at present it is impossible to clear up the exact conditions of its discovery. For lack of new data we cannot say anything about its origin; its authenticity is questionable. - Pearson, R., Introduction to Anthropology (1974) 336—338. 3 Ibid. 118. Zolnay, V., A művészetek eredete. (Budapest 1983) 229- 330., 228—289. 4 Vértes, L., op. cit. 141.