A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve, 1984/85-2. A népvándorláskor fiatal kutatóinak szentesi találkozóján elhangzott előadások. (Szeged, 1991)

Nagy Imre: Őstörténetünk néhány kérdése; szokatlan analógiák

SOME QUESTIONS OF ANCIENT HUNGARIAN HISTORY - UNCONVENTIONAL ANALOGIES Imre Nagy The author - who is studying Native North American art and history - tries to throw new lights on two questions of the history of ancient Hungarians. The first problem is: how many years were needed for a pedestrian people, living in a forested area to became equestrian nomads out on the Steppe-zone? The second question is: should we consider the ancient Hungarians as a „nation at the time of the Hungarian Conquest? According to his goal, the author raises new answers for these questions, and selects his analogies from the North American continent, where the buffalo hunting, equestrian Plains Indian people provided good, and never used parallels for these problems. In this effort, the author was guided by the excellent work of the American anthropologist, John H. Moore: The Cheyenne Nation, A Social and Demographic History (University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. 1987). Accepting Moore's evolutionary theory, and his selection of the Cheyenne Indian nation as case study, the author first gives a short ethnohistorical outline of the Great Plains area, then a brief sketch of the migration of the Cheyennes to the Black Hills region in present South Dakota. Then he analyses that the evolution from pedestrian hunters to equestrian, bison-hunting nomads went through in the case of the Cheyennes within less than three generations, while in the case of the Lakotas, it was scarcely more than two generations. This means, that the usual amount of 150-200 years of time for an evolution like that, might be too long, and exaggerated. Answering the second question, the author first enumerates the insufficient definitions of Hungarian scholars for the political formation of the ancient Hungarians at the time of the Conquest. Then he describes in detail Moore's definition of „tribal nation". According to the opinion of the present author, with the use of this term, some of the unsolved problems of ancient Hungarian political history should be revised, and after that, new conclusions might be formed. 551