Fitz Jenő (szerk.): Die aktuellen Fragen der Bandkeramik - István Király Múzeum közelményei. A. sorozat 18. A Pannon konferenciák aktái 1. (Székesfehérvár, 1972)
J. Nandris: Kapcsolatok a mérsékelt égőr legkorábbi újkőkora és a vonaldíszes kerámia között
to the population question, while at the same time it continued to perpetuate it. Only with the availability of a time scale has it become possible to examine this question of population growth. The difficulties are perhaps too obvious to enumerate — differential preservation of sites ; the question of their duration and constitution ; doubtful estimates of doubling times, mortality and life expectancy; the fact that radiocarbon centuries are not always 100 years, and so on. Nevertheless, even in the earliest periods of the neolithic there must already be an impression that Europe showed higher density and aggregation of settlement than in previous periods. We can compare the position as between the First Temperate Neolithic and the Bandkeramik, bearing in mind the chronological difference between them, since this brings out the differences which would not be so apparent in comparing the Bandkeramik with its coeval settlements of south east Europe. Around four to five hundred First Temperate Neolithic sites are known, covering a wide geographical area from Macedo —Bulgaria to Moldavia and the Körös region. Within this there are areas of closer aggregation, such as the Sofia basin, Moldavia, and particularly the Körös, which, as I have already mentioned, has about a third of the sites. Over such a large areas, and a period of time of, let us say, 800 years or more, the distribution is rather even, although the state of research must always be borne in mind. The significance of the density seen in the Körös region (and we should remember that on one estimate — this could amount to as little as five known sites for any one generation) may lie in the fact that it is from this area of the Hungarian Tiszántúl that an important part of the impulse for the next extension northwards of the Neolithic mode probably stemmed. By the time of the very striking emergence of the Bandkeramik in Central and Western Europe the Altithermal period had been in existence for several hundred years. Any adaptations to this environmental framework which may have been necessary were already well under way, and because of its very marked success one cannot doubt that the Bandkeramik phenomenon proved extraordinarily apt to the evolutionary situation. It may be that the necessary preadaptations were already present in Europe (this is already plausible in some peripheral areas such as Holland or as Belgium) ; the necessary ideas and techniques, and some physical requirements such as grain species, possibly even people, were probably forthcoming from the south east. It is the task of local research to establish which mechanisms, within the processes of differentiation and diffusion, are reelevant to a situation which certainly was not unitary over such a large area. At any rate, the number of Bandkeramik sites and the aggregation of individuals which each represents is considerable. The pattern contrasts with that for the First Temperate Neolithic, not only within the settlements themselves, which are more substantial, but in their more concentrated relation to each other. The duration of the phenomenon is comparable to that of the First Temperate, perhaps shorter. Yet such comparatively restricted areas as Bohemia, Moravia, or Saxo-Thuringia, each have probably more of these substantial settlements than the whole First Temperate Neolithic, while the total number of sites may be in the region of 2,500. Whence, then, is the considerable population of Europe in the early neolithic to be derived, saving those few aboriginals who huddled in caves and on sand dunes? Surely they are not all Asiatic Revolutionaries? There is no indication in any case of a reservoir for such a population, and the fact is that the period of time involved is adequate for natural increase to operate. It is going to become a question not whether we would prefer to derive this population from elsewhere, but whether it is at all realistic to do so. The onus to provide a source is on those who derive a trait from elsewhere. The links with the Mediterranean region attested by Spondylus objects remain convincing — even if not for the early Bandkeramik; the connections of the First Temperate Neolithic with the Aegean are equally so ; the connections of the early Bandkeramik with the FTN of Hungary begins to be plausible: the tendency to expansion northwards of human settlement during the Neothermal is established. All these attest certain processes at work. But the explanation of the rise of the neolithic in Europe cannot rest on one mechanism, either of diffusion from outside or of differentiation of the aboriginal mesolithic. On the available evidence both processes are involved, together with others affecting the environment. The important qualification to with I referred at the beginning of this paper is that none of them waits on the other for completion. These simultaneously operating processes of change best accord with what we know of the evolutionary nature of life on earth. London John Nundris 69
