Szekessy Vilmos (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 59. (Budapest 1967)

Bottyán, O.: Data to the anthropology of the Hun Period population in Hungary

Slightly curvooecipital. Posterior view: protuberances strongly protruding on occipital section, outlines of lineae, however, hardly discernible. Medium wide forehead with a flat glabellar area, only weak arcus superciliaris visible. Nasal root wide, nasal bones broken away. Margin of apertúra piriformis infantile. Right orbicular round, left broken. Fossa canina, as far as interprétable, rather flat. Mandibula incredibly thin, height of its branch 51 mm, small; width of smallest branch 28 mm, narrow; mandibular length 73 mm, medium. Mandibular angle 140°. It is to be noted yet that there is discernible, between the vertex and lambda, an oval, flat impression (greatest dimensions 29 x 37 mm) on the left oa parietale of the skull. The inner surface is unchanged. The assumption that we have to do with a symbolic trepanation, so frequent in the Hun Period, would not hold in this case. It is rather a mark of senile osteoporosis, and the more so as the skull is that of a senile individual. The stature cannot be interpreted owing to the lack of the long bones. The skull is entirely unsuitable for a typological analysis. Of the two Hun Period skulls it is therefore only the male one suitable for a detailed analysis. On its basis, it is Europo-Mongoloide. Comparison If one casts back a glance at the history of the Huns, we find that they appear on the stage of history for the first time in the first century B.C., when they hed been mentioned by the name Hiung-nu by Chinese sources. According to them, they had threatened the northern borders of China by their incursions. Later the Chinese gained the upper hand, and, when a part of the Huns were loath to acquiesce and surrender to the conquering Chinese empire, they had wandered westwards to the area of the recent Kazahstan. Having here been defeated by the Wu-suns, they ranged further again and also crossed the confines of Europe 300 years later, living on the northern part of the Caucasus. Crossing the Don, they took up their quarters in the west, overflew the Balkan, and extended their reign also to the Great Plain of Hungary at the end of the fourth, and the beginning of the fifth, centuries (FERENCZY, 1958). From the available and worked out anthropological material, we have selected first of all, with due regard to the direction of migration and period, the Northern, Inner and Central Asian localities for the sake of comparison. Furthermore, we have examined some individuals from the material of the time of the Hungarian Conquest by whose anthropometrical data a certain similarity with the Hun Period male of the Budapest site can be shown. Comparisons were also made with the Lugovo group (LIPTÁK, 1954), presumably related to the material of the Hungarian Conquest. Only male skulls had been considered. For the sake of evaluating resemblances, on the basis of exact numerical data, between the examined individual of the Hun Period and the individuals and groups respectively, we have calculated the per cent differences for the MARTIN 1, 8, 17, 5, 9, 45, 48 absolute measurements and the 8:1, 17:1, 9:8, 40:5, 48:45, 54:55, 52:51 or 52:51/a indices, therefore a total of 14 anthropometric features. The sum and squared sum respectively of these differences are submitted in the Tables I/a and I/b, separated into individuals and groups; in the case of groups on the basis of mean values. A comparative analysis of the facial profiles has been similarly made, for the