Dr. I. Pap szerk.: Studia historico-anthropologica (Anthropologia Hungarica 22. Budapest, 1992)

medium (with a tendency towards the category of great measurements) and broad eury-mesoprosopic opistho-orthognath according to the general angle of the vertical profile of the facial skeleton. It had a moderately medium deep fossa canina. Though the female groups revealed certain deviations towards Mongoloid patterns on the basis of the extent of the zygomatic angle the face of ancient Hungarians seems to be profiled in the horizontal plane in general. Thus ancient Hungarian populations were characterized by the morphological peculiarities of the Europoid race-stock according to the important traits of the horizontal profile. Their nose had medium height, medium breadth, was mesorhynic (with some tendency for leptorhyny with males) with a strongly anthropine form of the lower edge of the apertúra piriformis. Orbits are medium wide, lower with men, medium high with women. However, height measurements are quite identical for orbits of both sexes, they are chamaeconch but very close mesoconchy. CHAPTER 3 SOME MICROEVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES This chapter comprises two parts: "On the time-span and character of assimilatory processes" and "The main trends of changes". The Europoid physiognomy of the ancient Hungarian population was clearly reflected by comparative-morphological analysis. However, linguistical data does not conform with the main anthropological of ancient Hungarians settled down in the Central Danubian Basin. The key issue is that the linguistic "relatives" of Hungarians, the Ugors of West-Siberia (Hantis and Manshis) belong to the Uralian race being metisated descendants of Europoid and Mongoloid components. We must consider again the fact that the Mongoloid race-stock is quite significant within the composition of the Uralian race (Debets 1951). However, our present knowledge makes it impossible to neglect the hypothesis of the Ugric origin of the Hungrian people. The author followed the metisation processes of the morphological peculiarities of the facial skeleton from the Bronze Age to the end of the Neometallic period. The craniological series originated in five contact zones between the area of the Europoid and Mongoloid great races. These zones were: the Altay-Sayan mountains, Kazakhstan, Kirgisia, the Ural-Caspian region and the Kama basin. The time span of the assimilatory process was traced according to important race-diagnostic characters constituting the facial flatness index like nasomalar, zygomaxillary, nasalspine angles, dacryal and simotic heights (Debets 1957, 1961b). It could be stated that the morphological transformation of the facial skeleton took a time interval of 1-1.5 thousands years in case of the assimilation of Europoid or Mongoloid characters on the basis of anthropometric and biométrie data. However, this time interval does not seem to be long enough for the complete disappearance of one of the basic components. We can suppose that the period mentioned is to be interpreted as a rough estimate and it is probably sufficient only for the dominance of any of them. As far as the morphological structure of facial skeleton is concerned, the pace and limits of epochal transformation (i. e. assimilation) were conditioned by various social and biological - environmental factors (population density of the given tribal-clanic groups, dynamism of fertility within the interval of 35-45 generations, frequency of marriages between representative of the Europoid and Mongoloid races, food, climate, chemical composition of soil, etc). The fact that in spite of the millennia long Hunic-Turkish rule of the North-Caspian region the dominant frequency of Europoid characters did not alter significantly seems to have special importance in outlining the limits of the early period of Hungarians' ethnogenesis. As far as the expressiveness of the Mongoloid component is concerned, the craniological series of Conquering Hungarians are far from the cranial series of Bahmutino culture (1st millennia B.C.) and that of recent Mansis in the period when they settled in the North-Caspian region's Sarmatian environment. The same can be stated when comparing the