Kaszab Zoltán (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 64. (Budapest 1972)

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

(Table 1). The comparatively short duration of this process in the above area, that is, about a half thousand years, is revealed in the comparison with the Sialk group, wherein brachycrany became dominant, after its sporadic appearance during the Copper Age, at the beginning of the Neometallic, therefore in about one thousand years (VALLOIS, 1940). The difference appearing in the rate of the process could have been connected, despite the comparative social retardation of the more northern (West European) territories, with the increasing population density of that area, a factor which by infiltrations might have stochastically accelerated it. The regional disharmony of braehycephalization is well illustrable by the fact that while mesocrany characterizes the male group in the South Caucasus (Tkviavi) during the first half of the Bronze Age, the male group is dolichochranial in the Hindukush (Timargarha) during the late Bronze Age (Table I). Nor is it less striking that the process initiating braehycephalization was not uniform in the two groups of the West European Poladian (Table 1). The variation expressed in the amplitude of the neurocranial maximum length is essentially complementary to the above statements. Concerning the mean values of the series (Table 2), this variability fails to exceed essentially the oecumenic constants referring to the minimum — maximum values. The connection between the size of the amplitude and the individual numbers of the series is principally noteworthy. It can be established that in the Central Danubian Basin, a female series of the Bronze Age (Tiszafüred) contains, despite the small number of individuals, both extreme values of the amplitude (Table 2), being, incidentally, identical with the minimum —maximum values of the female group from the Aeneolithic of Marne, though the number of individuals in this latter locality is not 9 but 158 (Table 2). It can also be mentioned that intersexually the amplitude of the maximum length of the neurocranium equals that of one series each from the Mesolithic (Afalou-Bou-Rhummel), the Neolithic (Vovnighy), the Aeneolithic (Late Tripolye, Rumania), and the Bronze Age (Balanovo. Middle Volga) (Table 2). If the regional distribution of these latter finds are taken into consideration, one might contend that the diverse climatogeographical zones do not unilaterally determine the morphological variability of human populations. At the same time, one should not forget that these finds originate from various periods of social history and the intersexual agreement of the amplitude does not justify the exclusively determining role of the social factor. The craniological series, originating from 83 localities (contracted by the authors in some cases) in diverse regions of the Old World and from various periods of social development — and as analysed in the present paper — render important information by showing that the microevolutional morphologic changes were the results of the combined and special effects of several (oro- and climatogeographic, socio-biological, cultural — economical) factors. It should be kept in mind that these changes and modifications were enacted in the course of several thousand years. The analysis demonstrates that the gradual diminution of the neurocranial maximum length until the beginning of the NeometaUic had by all probability an autochthonous character. Nevertheless, the ethnic isolation running to centuries between the various regions of the Old World may be regarded as very small, since the repetition of intertribal infiltrations of small individual numbers had increased with the beginning of the Holocene. This is corroborated by both archeological and anthropological results with respect to the area of the Eastern Mediterranean, according to which the fragments of population groups of the above region had arrived at various places of Northern Eurasia. The occurrence of similar infiltra-