Kaszab Zoltán (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 65. (Budapest 1973)

Tóth, T.: On the morphological modification of anthropological series in the Central Danubian Basin

population in the Central Danubian Basin can hardly be coincidental. Brachycrany occurs in many cases in this Copper Age group (NEMESKÉRI 1951, 1956). The Sarata — Monteoru Bronze Age group of series near the SE Carpathians also reflects dohchocranial characteristics with a narrow — medium high face, thus revealing a close similarity to the Aeneohthic Bilcze-Zlote series (Table 2). There is no doubt, however, that brachycrany appears also in this Early Bronze Age series of comparatively great individual numbers (MAXIMILIAN" 1962). However, it should be borne in mind that gracihsation and brachycephalisation are microevolutional processes relatively independent of each other. In any case, the rate of gracihsation is better Fig. 4. Epochal changes of cranial height expressed, instead of the linear data and the two-factor cranial index, by the sixfactor preauricular facio-eerebral index, whose numerator is composed by the sums of the diametric values of the splanchnocranium (basion-prostion length, bizygomatic breadth, upper facial height) and the denominator by those of the neurocranium (basion-nasion length, minimum frontal diameter, basion-bregma height) {DEBETS 1964). In the given case, the values of this special index were analysed with regard to the series mentioned above of the Central Danubian Basin, in wliich connection the female series were summarized by the apphcation of the coefficients of sexual dimorphism ( ALEXEYEV & DEBETS 1964) with the data of the male groups. Though the relative chronology of the various periods of the Neohthic and the Paleometalhc displays divergencies subcontinentally, in connection with the relative retardation of the groups from the more northern territories, there is no doubt on the basis of analysis of a comparatively great number of series that gracihsation began earlier and was stronger in the southern, Mediterranean belt (DEBETS 1961). This holds especially for findings from the Eastern Mediterranean. By the comparative analysis of series deriving from Central and Western Europe, the drawing of the northern confines of gracihsation was made possible (TÓTH 1971a). As far as the early populations of the Central Danubian Basin are concerned, NEMESKÉRI (1961 a, b) contends that the Cro-Magnonian autochthonous and the immigrant Mediterranean components were equally present in their morphological structure during the Neolithic. He states at the same time that in the Copper Age groups, inhabiting the Great Plain, the Mediterranean component prevailed especially between the Danube and the Tisza and east of the Tisza. We have recently analysed the values of the preauricular facio-cerebral index obtained from 24 series (Table 2),