Horváth Attila – H. Tóth Elvira szerk.: Cumania 1. Archeologia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1972)

S. Bökönyi: Őstulok (Bos primigenius Boj) leletek az Őrjeg tőzeglápjaiban

AUROCHS (BOS PRIMIGENIUS BOJ.) REMAINS FROM THE ŐRJEG PEAT-BOGS BETWEEN THE DANUBE AND TISZA RIVERS BY S. BÖKÖNY1 Among the more important domestic animals of the temperate zone of Europe cattle and pig have wild ancestors that live or lived in the territory which is today called Hungary. The wild form of cattle the aurochs, became extinct here in the 13th century A. D., just after the Mongolian invasion. Although it was protected as a noble wild by royal orders throughout Europe, it did not survive the first third of the 17th century even in the huge, undisturbed forests of Poland. The wild swine that gave man the domestic pig is a rather common wild animal in our country up until recent times. Strangely enough the whole history of aurochs is much better known that of the wild swine in spite of the fact that aurochs became extinct and completely disappeared from the sight of zoologists (we do not even know its Hungarian name). It had to be rediscovered around the end of the 19th century. It would certainly be difficult to find the reason why the aurochs drew the special attention of the zoologists. Nevertheless, one thing is certain: while the wild pig has been a common, rather usual member of the mammal fauna of Hungary the aurochs was a mysterious animal. Probably this resulted in several studies on the aurochs of Hungary; among them a monograph based on the historical sources (Szalay, no date) ; another work on its osteological finds and its local domestication (Bökönyi, 1962); several studies on its relationship to the Hungarian grey longhorn cattle (Hankó, 1967,1950; Matolcsi, 1968,1970; Jankovich, 1969); and even X-ray studies on the fine structure of its bones and their differentation from those of domestic cattle (Bökönyi—Kállai— Matolcsi

—Tarján, 1965). The aurochs as a species preferring warm climate was quite rare in Hungary during the Pleistocene period. Its frequency was always far behind that of the other wild cattle, the bison. This situation changed at once with the end of the Ice Age. Under the favourable conditions of the so-called climatic optimum of the post-Pleistocene, the number of aurochs increased very fast and surpassed by far that of the bison already in the Early Neolithic. Since the aurochs was the animal of open forested plains, without an extreme continental climate, it found excellent living conditions on the Hungarian Plain. This territory, a large plain, well separated from the colder northern Central Europe and the more continental Eastern Europe by the Carpathes, was an ideal habitat for this large cattle. Undoubtedly it would be difficult to determine its actual frequency in the local wild fauna and to compare it to other parts of Europe. However, the fact that it appears in an extremely high ratio in the faunal samples of prehistoric sites in Hungary shows clearly that it had to live in big masses here. In Hungary the ratio of aurochs bones is as high as 60—70% in the faunal sample of certain neolithic sites; and aurochs is the most frequent hunted animal throughout the Hungarian Neolithic. The frequency of certain age groups and the occurrence of transitional individuals between domestic and wild cattle speak not only for a highly specialized hunting, but also for a local domestication of the species in these sites (Bökönyi, 1959, 1962, 1969). In this respect no other area of Europe can compete with the Carpathian Basin, and one may rightly surmise that this territory was the main centre of cattle domestication in Europe, albeit not the earliest. Because of the high frequency of the aurochs in the fauna of the Early Holocene in Hungary, Hungarian bone collections are very rich in its remains, Neverthe17