Viola T. Dobosi: Paleolithic Man in the Által-ér Valley (Tata, 1999)

On the surface, the water is wasting and the calcareous tuff is deposited. The place, pace of the deposition can be influenced by several factors, the two most important ones being: the location of the erosional base, i.e., the lowermost point of the water catchment area and the quantity of natural precipitation diluting the minerals. These two decisive environmental factors can lead to two important consequences: - within an area of a few square kilometres, the erosional basis is uniform, the springs come forth at the lowest point of the relief lying at identical altitudes. Thus in a smaller region the calcareous covers of similar altitude will be coeval. The palaeontological-archaeological finds coming forth from these will mutually help in dating the terrace and the formation of the calcareous tuff and, at the same time, help in identifying the age when the finds were embedded into the limestone. - the connection between the quantity of precipitation of a more or less longer period and the formation of the calcareous tuff allows us to draw, from the rhythm of sedimentation and the quality of the embedded looser sediments, consequences concerning the climate, on the long run, the physical environment of prehistoric people. The calcareous spring water will, quite often, build basins: such phenomenon can be observed in Hungary for example in the Szalajka-valley at the so-called „veil-falls", or in dripstone caves, on the side of the stalagmites (form of dripstone growing upwards from the floor of the cave). These are mostly in the order of a few centimetres to some decimetres. More bulky calcareous tuff basins can be observed at some more distant locations, nearest at the Plitvica lakes (Croatia), in the Yellowstone Park (USA) or in Turkey. These large calcareous tuff basins, run dry, encircled with variable height walls would be always a suitable place for settlement just the same as during the Ice Age for prehistoric people. In the Által-ér valley, this calcareous tuff cover preserved us the remains of two invaluable settlements of prehistoric men, completed by the hunters' camp Middle Palaeolithic cave site opening at the margin of the Gerecse Mountains which is without parallel in our country. 9