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)

14. Upper Palaeolithic stone tools from Esztergom in the Danube Bend, made from raw material imported from the Prut Valley. 17,000 B.C. extending into the Danube. There can be no doubt as to the success of hunting expeditions organised along the seasonal (spring and autumn) migration routes of the reindeer herds. The physical appearance of the late Upper Palaeolithic hunters can be reconstructed from the skeletal remains in their burials. These hunters were the direct predecessors of modern European populations. These communities provided their dead with a rich assortment of grave goods. The deceased were laid to rest in clothes decorated with thousands of beads, together with their ornaments and their headwear; the exceptionally beautifully crafted and valuable articles laid into the grave were a mark of the relatives' grief. The Late Palaeolithic communities reached the highest level of hunter/scavenger lifeways. They triumphed over the day to day problems of survival and the challenges posed by the harsh conditions by resourceful co-operation. They were the successful survivors of the last harsh millennia. 6. TOOL MANUFACTURE The surviving stone and bone tools are the most important and most abundant source of information for the Palaeolithic. The knapping techniques used in tool-making, perfected according to each individual's best abilities, talent and skill, were handed down from one generation to the other. The similarities or uniformities in the design and workmanship of various artefacts form the basis of archaeological typology, which in turn sheds light on the regional distribution and chronological boundaries of a particular culture, as well as on the emergence and survival of archaeological cultures, and on contact between settlements, the cultural identity of various communities and the migration routes of various population groups. 7. CAVES The dark caves and caverns in limestone hills and mountains are still the settings of many