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)

HALL 1 - The Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic (400,000-6000 B.C.) (Viola T. Dobosi)

tages, a tribute to the intellectual powers of this hominid community. The uneven, but more or less horizontal base of the basin was covered with debris (which in some spots accumulated to a thickness of 60 cm), preserving the refuse from everyday life. A section of the original surface where tools were made, animals were butchered or fires were kindled, called the culture-bearing layer by archaeologists, has been exhibited in one of the cases. The "taming" of fire caused naturally by lighting was the first major step in the long technical progress lasting to our own days. Fires were preserved and tended using greasy animal bones broken into small fragments. The tools were made from easily workable pebbles collected from the gravel of a nearby stream. The flint and silex pebbles were split, halved or broken into smaller pieces, and the segments and flakes thus gained were further worked with a few strikes to create the tool necessary for a particular task (Fig. 10). The settlements of hominid groups using cleavers made from pebbles can be found throughout the Old World. These isolated settlements, lying far from each other both spatially and chronologically, were the settings for a long, slow development, and it seems unlikely that there was any exchange of the knowledge accumulated by individual communities. This conservative tool-making technique survived throughout the Palaeolithic. The limetuff basins at Vertesszőlős were occupied over a fairly long period of time. Hominid groups returned to this attractive region at intervals of a few hundred or few thousand years, even though the memory of earlier settlements had since long faded. The climate gradually changed and the environment too was gradually transformed: the limetuff precipitated by the warm springs was replaced by dry, yellow loess, which covered the remains of the later settlements. The hominid communities apparently favoured this area and clung to their accustomed life-style and their tool-making traditions. The finds from the five successive habitation levels reflect the advances in tool-making. The raw material for the pebble-tools was chosen more carefully and the tools themselves were worked more meticulously. These early hominids became more skilful with the passage of time. The development unfolding here can be traced up to the Middle Palaeolithic. A world in which man became less dependent on nature was successfully, albeit slowly created. The most spectacular finds from Vértesszőlős were the human remains: a child's milktooth and the occipital bone of an adult man. 4. THE MIDDLE PALAEOLITHIC The period from the close of the second (Mindel) glaciation represents a several thousands of millennia long hiatus in Hungarian prehistory: not one single site from this era has yet been identified in Hungary. Following the alternating warm and cold spells of the Ice Age, a group of Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthal en sis) made their way to the Carpathian Basin. They stayed for about 50-60 thousand years; their latest settlements are roughly co-eval with the arrival of the earliest Upper Palaeolithic groups. These heavy-boned, sturdy men and women adapted successfully to the harsh climate of the Ice Age. The overall population of the Middle Palaeolithic grew, as did the size of individual communities; there is a visible rise in the number of sites from this period the world over. The Hungarian sites of this period show a concentration in the Bükk and the Dunazug Mountains. These communities settled in the most diverse environments. Some chose the sheltered limetuff basins once settled by their early predecessors, although they preferred locations closer to water (Tata-Porhanyóbánya). Others made their homes in caves - the best known among these is the Subalyuk Cave near Cserépfalu, in the valley of the Hór Stream. Narrow valleys through which hunted species migrated were also chosen for settlement (e.g. at Érd). The foundations of artificial structures, huts, have been unearthed on