Garam Éva szerk.: Between East and West - History of the peoples living in hungarian lands (Guide to the Archaeological Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum; Budapest, 2005)

The environment of ancient man (Katalin T. Bíró, Zsófia Medzihradszky, Andrea Torma, István Vörös)

6. The proportion of wild and domestic animals as reflected in archaeological hone samples. 1. Mesolithic, 2-6. Neolithic (2. Körös culture, 3. Alföld Linear Pottery, 4. Lengyel culture, 5. Tisza culture, 6. Herpály culture), 7. Copper and Bronze Age, 8. Iron and Roman Age, 9. Migration period Domestic animals 100 100 Hunted animals European bison and aurochs, reindeer was replaced by red deer, while Pleistocene wild horse by East European wild horse and wild ass, and wild boar too made its appearance. Wild horse and wild ass gradually withdrew by the Late Neolithic, while maral deer and Persian lion made a brief appearance. Mesopotamian fallow deer and elk too appeared for a brief time during the Middle Copper Age. The most significant large game animal during the Hungarian Holocene was aurochs. It occurred in greatest numbers during the Late Neolithic. Displayed as part of the exhibition is an aurochs neck vertebra with an embedded stone arrowhead. Aurochs gradually declined after the Roman Age and became extinct by the 9th century. The extinction of certain species during the Holocene can be attributed to human activity - the mass hunting of certain wild animals and the destruction of their habitats - rather than to climatic changes. The most often bunted large mammalian species were red deer, boar, roe deer and aurochs, all of which were meat purpose game. Brown hare was hunted for both its meat and fur, while red fox, beaver, wild cat, wolf, brown bear and badger were prized for their fur. DOMESTIC ANIMALS The single domestic animal in the Mesolithic was dog, a valuable hunting companion. The earliest domestic animals were introduced to the Carpathian Basin by the immigrant Körös communities, arriving from South-East Europe. The most important species were sheep and goat originating from South-West Asia, as well as cattle. Neolithic communities too kept domestic dog; pig became a member of the animals bred by man slightly later. Domestic horse first appeared in the Copper Age; domestic ass, domestic cat and hen in the Iron Age. The earlier exclusive role of wild animals as sources of meat changed with the appearance of domestic animals. The proportion of domestic and wild animals in the Neolithic differed from culture to culture. Hunting of meat animals disappeared by the Roman Age and was replaced by sport hunting, indicated also by the introduction of the first game reserve species, fallow deer. Domestic animals practically became all-exclusive by the Migration period: the ratio of domestic species in the animal bone samples from sites of this period is 98-99 per cent (Fig. 6).