Kaszab Zoltán (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 76. (Budapest 1984)

Tóth, T.: Some anthropological problems of the Mesolithic Europoids, I.

placed in subtropical, temperate and boreal climate zones. On the other hand, as it is seen from the numerical data the craniological polymorphism characterizing the Upper-Paleolithic populations occurred through the Mesolithicum in a number of subcontinental groups of Europoids. The breadth of the facial skeleton as an element of the abovementioned polymorphism reveals significant differences among the Mesolithie groups. It may be surprising that the maximum values of the bizygomathic breadth characterize both the Maghreb and Ukrainian groups who inhabited localities which are very far from each other (Table 1). It can be seen from the data relating to this subject that the hypomorphy of the facial skeleton first appeared in the Mediterranean, i.e. in the subtropical zone (Balkan peninsula). This is well expressed in the significantly differing data of facial breadth from male and female groups from the Early-Neolithic Mediterranean Nea Nikomedeia and from the northern Mesolithie Zveinieki (8.5-9.0 mm!) (Tables 1 and 2). However, it deserves attention that the breadth of the facial skeleton has a significantly higher value in the male as well as in the female group from the Late-Mesolithic Vlasac than in the group from Nea Nikomedeia (plus 10-12 mm!) (Tables as above). In some of her papers FEREMBACH (1978a-b, 1979) documented the modifications of some craniomorphological characteristics which took place between the Final Pleistocene and the Mesolithie, caused by changes in the climate. She supposes a connection on the one hand between the rising temperature, on the other one the increase in basion-bregma height, minimum frontal diameter, the cranial height-length index and the nasal breadth. VOLKOVDUBROVIN & ROGINSKY (1960) turned their attention to the fact that the craniological finds from the European Upper-Paleolithic are characterized by a relatively great height-breadth index value. They controlled experimentally in recent craniological material (Pamirians, Kirghisians) the effect of a permanent high temperature. They refer to the fact that the maximum value of the height-breadth index

—often above 100—can be found in the aborigin populations inhabiting the tropical zone. Authors find worth mentioning that the value of this index was in the Mesolithie populations of western and easterns Europe similarly high and therefore they suppose a southern origin of this feature in the ancient populations of both subcontinents. These high index values are clearly expressed in further finds from the recent past (Tables 1 and 2). Values above 100 characterize the overwhelming majority of the male series presented by us. The close values of this index found in the Mesolithie group Vlasac and in those from Ukrainia as well as from the boreal Zveinieki deserve particular attention; the index of cranial height-breadth is in a number of female series of similarly high values (the Mesolithie Ukrainian and French groups as well as those from Zveinieki) (Table 2). The supposable connections between the modifications of the craniomorphological traits and the climatic changes, i.e. the effects of the rising temperature in the Mesolithie are clearly reflected by the identity of the values of the mentioned cranial index in all the female series (Mesolithie French and Early Neolithic series from Nea Nikomedeia) (Table 2). It is a craniomorphological trait of tropical origin which also existed—according to its high indexvalue

—in the Neolithic East-European-Baltic populations (Tables 1 and 2). The overall rise in temperature during the Mesolithie was not considerably influenced by accidental brief climatic oscillations. Thus the permanent rise in temperature which lasted about three millenia (in the Mesolithie) seems to be a sufficient natural ecological condition for the thermo-adaptive development of hypsistenocephaly in the Mediterranean region and for the persistence of this characteristics in the more northern zones of Europoids area during the Epimesolithicum. It may be supposed that this morphological thermo-adaptation did not occur generally in populations from all the subcontinent, because the ecosensitivity of the individuals composing the groups was not the same. The values of the height-breadth