A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1991 (Debrecen, 1993)

Természettudomány - Szathmáry László: Iron Gate–Carpathian Basin: Connections between the Early Holocene Populations

3 principal components coult be extracted in the case of the metrical traits. By these the 65 and 64 per cents of the total variance in the case of males and females, respectively, could be expressed. The communalities (Table 3) in both sexes are relatively high in the cases of 6 variables and relatively low in the case of 3 variables. The correlations of the finds are demonstrated on the cluster trees drawn according to the extracted factor scores (Figures 1 and 2). What seems sure on the basis of all these is the strong cohesion within the Mesolithic finds of the Iron Gate as well as within the Karanovo finds. Neither the Lepenski Vir culture nor the Körös-Cris culture could be said to show the same cohesive force (Table 4). As regards the interserial connections it is remarkable that the Mesolithic cranial finds of the Iron Gate show similarity to the early Neolithic skulls of the Körös-Cris culture and the importance of its connections with the local Starcevo culture only comes after that. The heterogeneous structure of the LVC does not manifest similarity to the finds of either Karanovo horizon or the MELP. Whereas it shows a close connection with the locally ensuing Starcevo crania. That is, with a culture the cohesion of which is extremy strong. Thus we can suppose that in the Iron Gate region the Mesolithic period may have meant a process influenced by southern genetic impulses in wich the local surviving at the time of the LVC may have been broken by a slight exogamous period. Synchronously, it must be emphasized that LVC is characterised by a strongly marked profile owing to its heterogeneous morphological structure. This phenomenon can be perhaps interpreted as a state specific of a transition period. As regards the two early Neolithic cultures of the Carpathian Basin which can be at all analyzed (Körös-Cris and MELP), on the basis of the IRC values primarily we can conclude that there was only little probability of LVC influences playing a great part in the development of their populations. The Körös-Cri§ culture shows several characteristic features common with the Mesolithic skeletal remains of the Iron Gate. It is striking, however, that the sample of the MELP seems much more independent of the Mesolithic - proto-Neolithic sample of the Iron Gate than the Körös-Cris material does. Failing further references it can be only assumed that the roots of the development of Körös-Cri§ (and probably Starcevo) populations may have been different from those of the MELP population, that is, MELP population may have developed under slight southern influences. This assumption well harmonize with the conception the northsouth segregation of the Mesolithic material culture in the Carpathian Basin (Szathmáry, 1988), which represents a different character of the adaptation of the pre-Neolithic basic populations from that of the populations in the peripheries of the basin. It is remarkable that the Starcevo sample characterised by high cohesion and the Körös-Cri§ sample characterised by low cohesion exhibit relations of approximately similar degrees to the pre-Neolithic Iron Gate. From this fact we can draw a conclusion that the populations of the two early Neolithic civilizations developed in different directions in a sense that the Körös-Cri§ population developed under the influence of more complex evolutionary moments than the presented Starcevo sample including that the low cohesion in the case of the Körös-Cri§ population may have been occasioned by the influence of the Mesolithic surviving basic populations of unknown habitus which, east of the Iron Gate, were continuously migrating to the north. In any case, on the basis of IRC values we can assume, already in the Mesolithic, activity of those southern influences which may have effected the Iron Gate as well as the territories east and north of that (the Körös-Cri§ culture may have developed in the latter sites) in different ways. In this opinion the Starcevo sample (the bulk of which comes from the Iron Gate) may represent a type of development which may have been influenced in a decisive way by the microevolution of the pre-Neolithic Iron Gate, which also admitted southern impulses. 69