Kaszab Zoltán (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 63. (Budapest 1971)

Tóth, T.: On the morphological modification of anthropological series in the Lithic and Paleometallic [sic] Ages II.

value of the preauricular facio-cerebral index further decreases in numerous cases in the Neolithic findings (Cardiaux, Rössen-Hinkelstein, Niederhessen; Table 1). If this combined index truly expresses the rate of gracilization, then this process can be traced in several other findings of the Aeneolithic and Bronze Ages. Of these, the data referring to the series from the Moravian Uneticean, the Middle-Rhine Zonenbecher, the Oise and the Aisne should be pointed out (cf. the respective Table). If all our examined series are compared, it can be established that the decrease of the values of the combined index appears at the earliest during the Mesolithic and the Neolithic in the Mediterranean area, and subsequently, at a chronologically later time, it began, or accelerated, also in the populations of West and Central Europe. This process might have begun on the two subcontinents by the effects of socio-economic factors in the aboriginal ethnic groups, but the infiltration of more gracilized groups from the Mediterranean might also have played a role. The values of the combined index submit thereby an essential supplementation in the evolvement of the population of Mediterranean Europe (CHARLES, 1960). It should be remarked that the values of the findings herein studied show a significant agreement with those of the series, analysed previously (TÓTH, 1970), originating from East Europe, Central Asia, and the Eastern Mediterranean, affording a preliminary outline of the northern zone of gracilization. According to the available 87 series, the northern confines of this process extended, at the beginning or in the first half of the Paleometallie Age, in the temperate-continental zone of the Eurasian continent, in the enormous area between the mouth of the Rhine and the Fig. 1. The northern confines of gracilization at the time of Neolithic and Paleometallie Ages