Szekessy Vilmos (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 58. (Budapest 1966)
Tóth, T.: The period of transformation in the process of metisation. (A paleoanthropological [sic] sketch)
ANNALES HISTORICO-NATURALES MUSEI NATION ALIS HUNGARICI Tomus 58. PARS ANTHROPOLOGICS 1966. The Period of Transformation in the Process of Metisation (A Paleoanthropological Sketch) By T. TÓTH, Budapest This treatise was written to honour, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, of G. E. DEBETS, who discusses in anthropological literature since long decades the diverse aspects of race-genesis based on the greatest amount of osteological material of very different archeological periods. In analysing our theme, it should, first of all, be borne in mind that we are dealing with intraspecific transformation which was enacted by the mixture of the primordial taxonomic character-complexes of the Eurasian continent. It is well-known that the morphological characteristics of the two main taxonomic (Europoid and Mongoloid) branches of the Eurasian continent became consolidated within the several continental areas since the beginning of the neolithic time (DEBETS, 1948, 1951, 1961 a, b; BTTNAK, 1959). This, naturally, does not mean at all the negation of the variability of morphologic characters within the continental branches mentioned above. At the same time, it was also found indisputable that the most important differential diagnostic features are concentrated in the osteomorphologic characteristics of the facial skeleton, and expressed in the rate of flatness (DEBETS, 1961 b). According to observations made on a great amount of osteological finds, no essential alterations were wrought in the primordial taxonomic character-complex of the facial skeleton, from the neolithic age to the present (DEBETS, 1961 b). For this very cause, the series of finds originating from the contact-zones of the two main taxonomic (Europoid and Mongoloid) branches of the Eurasian continent, as published by the Soviet anthropologists, render sufficient and adequate bases for the analysis of our selected theme. We have made complementary biométrie studies on osteological series deriving from the contact-zones of the Altai —Sayan, Kazahstan, Kirghizia, the Ural —Caspian, and the Kama Basin, published in earlier papers. By this, the period of structural changes (transformation), effected by intermingling, shall become even more conspicuously traceable. Analysis of the problem On the finds of the Altai—Sayan Range, the transformation can be well followed from the Bronze Age, that is, from the time of the Andronovo culture, to the evolvement of the several ethnic groups of the present (Table 1, Eig. 1). Though, according to DEBETS (1947, 1948), the first large-scale intermingling of the elements of the Europoid and Mongoloid race-groups began already at the time of the Paleometallic time, the effects of this metisation is hardly discernible in the ethnic composition of the Karassuk culture, save eventually in connection with the value of the nasomalar angle. Therefore it were permitted to assume that, from the early phases (Afanasyevskaya culture) of the Bronze Age to its end, the Mongoloid groups had been assimilated in the intermingling mentioned above. Hence the brachycranial Mongoloid component (ALEXEYEV, 1961 a) is of a quite subordinate importance in
