Makkay János: A magyarság keltezése – A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok közleményei 48. (1994)
crystalline and unspoiled Hungarian tongue, were part of the extended Hungarian-speaking continuum in the Carpathian Basin that survived the decline and fall of the Avar chiefdom and occupied the peripheral territories listed above. Historians usually refer back to these areas on the western and south —western frontiers of the [later] Arpádian territory where the original folk-groups of the Avar era were assimilated into the masses of the Slavs. The question of the so-called cremation graves of the ancient Slavs in SW Transdanubia and elsewhere presents itself here (see chapter 3.8.h.!). The existence of these Slavic cremation graves used to be considered undeniable proof of the early presence of Slavs in the relevant areas. Now, it appears that four of these sites (from a number of about of about twenty) should be redated (see notes 724—727!): the famous cremation graves of ancient Slavs of Keszthely are in fact burials of the Copper Age Baden culture (i.e. before 2000 ВС.) and of the Late Bronze Age Urnfield pottery culture (around 1000 ВС.) . One Slavic cinerary urn from the area of Miskolc is a find dating to the Roman period, one Slavic urn from Csongrád belongs to the inventory of the Avars, while another of these Slavic urn graves belongs to the Middle Bronze Age Vatya culture (i.e. around 1500 ВС). These facts do not give much support to the opinions of those historians and archaeologists who repeatedly emphasise the decisive role of Slavic speakers in shaping the history of the Carpathian Basin in the 9th —10th centuries. What follows is that the speakers of Proto —Hungarian were neither exterminated nor Slavicized in this area between Late Avarian and Arpadian times. Chapter 5. summarises various theories on the coming of the Hungarian language and Hungarians into the Carpathian Basin, ranging from the brilliant intuitions of Ármin Vámbéry in the eighties of the last century through the works of Géza Nagy, Zoltán Gombocz and their followers to the present (for more details also see above!). Chapter 5.3. returns to the question of Iranian loan-words in Hungarian. The majority of these are usually regarded as adstratal words from the Late Iranian stock of the Alanian/Old Ossetian group from the 3 th —4th centuries AD. onwards. Whether Proto-Hungarians and Old Ossetian (i.e. Alanian) tribes coexisted north of the Caucasus, in the Kuban and near the Pontic shore during the 5th —9th centuries 221
