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

debates but the above dates seem generally acceptable). They were followed by the first genus termed Homo (= Man), Homo habilis, appearing about two million years ago. The first station of the human phyletic tree, Homo erectus, i.e., early man, considered universally as the first genuine station of hominisation: after the diversified roots, the massive trunk, the base population. Though thinner-thicker side-branches mark the tendency of diversification in human phylogenesis, the identity of the Homo erectus as being really humans cannot be questioned. The name itself is a bit anachronistic, because the Primates walked actually „erect, on two legs, long before the Homo erectus, but the nomination given by the first students of hominisation had to be preserved. This human race populated the Old World during the on-coming Ice Age from Beijing to Portugal, from Germany to Java. (This does not imply that Man in his physical reality /human remains/ was found everywhere. Human settlements of this period were, however, excavated from many places. These settlements can be occasionally more authentic proofs of human presence than fossil human bones without accompanying finds). In Hungary, Homo erectus was found at Vértesszőló's. Their period of existence is the approximately half million years starting from the beginning of the classical European Ice Age. (Chronological data cannot be defined in this period even within the accuracy of millennia, just because the characteristics of biological development and the causalities of the different methods used for age determination.) As we are approaching the present age, the pace of development is getting quicker (or, from more evidence, we have a more detailed image on this process). The generalised, uniform basic population was dispersed over large geographical areas, adapted itself to widely different environmental conditions, got gradually isolated and adopted different courses of development. The „classical' prehistoric men called after the first locality, Neanderthals, appeared in the interglacial period preceding the last great glaciation period. They represent the middle phase of the human development. From their two major groups known to us, the Western European population seemed to get among relatively favourable conditions and flourished, creating rich and variable archaeological cultures, but probably due to the lack of forcing impetus, lost their ability to cope with changing circumstances, the ability for a biological transformation. The Neanderthals living at the western margins of Asia, in Asia Minor, at the same time, turned to Homo sapiens and became the base population of Eurasia. The age of the Neanderthals is only extending to some 100-150 thousand years (time is getting shorter, development faster!). In Hungary, human remains of the Neanderthal man were found at two localities: in the Subalyuk and the Remete-Upper caves. Fortunately, the 16