Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 4.-5. 1963-1964 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1965)
Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Bóna István: The Peoples of Southern Origin of the Early Bronze Age in Hungary I–II. IV–V, 1963–64. p. 17–63. t. I–XVII.
ses of the local population along, it invades Central and South —Eastern Europe. The horse-breeding herdsmen of the steppe and other ethnical groups accompanying them liquidate the Pécel culture in the Tisza region. The Pécel population of the Great Plain flees northwards to the mountains, to North —Western Slovakia and Moravia. Other pit-grave tumulus groups appear in Transylvania, on the Roumanian Plain and in Northern Bulgaria, they remove the folk of the Salcut.a —Krivodol culture from their settlements. For the time being we have no certain information on the question, how far did the pit-grave tumulus folk drive to the South on the Balcans. Their route or the connections with them are possibly marked by the burial mounds appearing in the Drina valley and in Greece from the Middle Helladic Age onwards, but it may well be that these mounds are to be attributed to some other people, immigrating to the Greek Peninsula from a different direction. At the same time with the onrush of the pit-grave folk, the devastating attack of a horse-breeding people of herdsmen, invading Anatolia by the Caucasian region, works havoc in this area. This unknown people annihilates numerous mighty settlements in a wide belt of Northern and Central Anatolia, it devastates Troy V city and invades Thracia and Macedonia, pushing the disseized tribes ahead. In the South —East Thracian settlements of the Troy —Veselinovo culture life comes to an end without exception, in Eastern Macedonia and on the Chalkidike it either ceases or becomes reduced to vegetation. The folk of the Western Macedonian culture flees to Thessalia and Boiotia, probably followed by the rarefied ranks of the invarders Large groups of the South —East Thracian and Eastern Macedonian population avoided the onslaught across Anatolia towards the North. The population of the former territory migrates northwards along the Marica —Danube valley, and on the eastern bank of the Morava, pushes the folk of the Salcu^a —Krivodol culture ahead, it occupies Oltenia (group Glina III), then it reaches the Körös region through the Banate (Gyula group). Another part finds a new home on the heights of Transylvania, surrounded by mountains (Schneckenberg В — С culture). All the three groups become closely connected to the population driven here by the movement of the pit-grave tumulus folk, the latter feels their strong cultural impact very soon. Being forced to move by the waves of peoples both from East and South, the Salcuta —Krivodol folk is dragged into the TiszaiKörös—Maros region, bordered by marshes and large rivers, and it expels the thin layer of the population led by the pit-grave tumulus folk from here. We call this people, developing in a close connection with the Nagyrév culture, the Pitvaros group. This group becomes amalgamated in the Perjámos culture, having appeared with the Aegean Middle Bronze Age I culture, at the end of the first half of the Hungarian Early Bronze Age. The inhabitants of the Eastern Macedonian settlements of the Troy —Veselinovo culture appear at the first time along the middle stretch of the Drina, reaching it by the route Vardar —Morava —Little (Serbian) Morava. Their material civilization is an organic continuation of Macedonian precedents, but as regards the mounds raised at the burial of their leaders they imitate the typical rite of the leading stratum of the pit-grave tumulus folk. This people or its larger part proceeds northwards along the Drina and, unable to hold ground between the Save and the Drave on account of the Vucedol extension, it crosses the Drave, liquidating the Baden —Pécel culture in the Danube —Drave corner as well. The new inhabitants impopulate all Western Hungary in scattered settlements. Brought into being in this way, the Somogyvár group exerts a fertile influence on the Early Nagyrév culture, developped on the area of the Zók (Makó) group. Still at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age the Somogyvár group becomes amalgamated in the groups of the Vucedol culture extending in Transdanubia and South —Western Slovakia, preserving important cultural elements of the former. The historical significance of the Somogyvár and Pitvaros groups lies in their activity in barring, thugh they were refugees themselves, the rule of the tribes of herdsmen in the Central and Lower Danubian basin, consolidated step by step nearly in all this area, a rule equal to the ruin of the millenary Balcanic —Anatolian civilization. Here they transplanted the developped Early Bronze Age civilization of the Aegean, laying the foundations for the quiet evolution of the Early and Middle Bronze Age in the Central and Lower Danubian region for centuries to come. So they created a higher new period of the Balcanic —Anatolian civilization, flourishing for centuries, in place of the devastated Copper Age culture of the same derivation. Which were the reasons for this achievement? Their developped agricultural technique, their bronze craftsmanship surpassing any other European territory of that time, and 62
