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

number of known settlements, hunting camps is much more than that. In Komárom-Esztergom county, their traces were found in the Jankovich-cave, in the Által-ér valley at Tata and in the Szelim-cave. Biological development of man reached its peak by the middle of the last (Wurm) glaciation, some 40-50 years ago. The iceage ancestor of modern man Homo sapiens fossilis appeared. This Homo sapiens is completely identical with us in a biological sense, further development took place only in a cultural-social sense. Due to the artificial environment created for his own protection and comfort (arms, tools, clothing, housing) mankind could adapt well to small changes of the surrounding world, almost insensible during one human generation and the territory of the Carpathian Basin was practically never empty during the almost inconceivably long time of the ice-age climatic periods. Archaeological finds prove that at least some hunting communities fruitfully survived even the most severe periods of the Ice Age. It can be taken for certain that by the end of the Ice Age the Palaeolithic subsistence strategies for utilising the natural resources, plants, animals and mineral resources was suitably effective and successful. Playing a little with numbers and collating known and/or deduced, estimated data, we can arrive at the conclusion that the Carpathian Basin could sustain at a given period not more than 30 thousand persons (!) following a hunting-gathering way of life. The area of the Carpathian Basin can be calculated (along the watersheds) 300 thousand km^ large. We can estimate an ideal number for the individual hunting communities on the basis of ethnographical parallels as 2530 persons in various distribution of age and gender, necessary for the procurement of food and the reproduction of the community. The game sustaining capacity of the area can be estimated on the basis of economicalecological statistics (i.e., how large an area would be necessary for the game stock necessary for the survival of the hunters, without endangering the reproduction of the gamestock itself)- The above calculations were made for ideal conditions that never really existed in the Carpathian Basin during the Ice Age as the territory was not habitable at all spots. Thus the 30 thousand estimate for the population is only for orientation and probably never reached during the Palaeolithic period. Considering the density of population in the Által-ér valley and Komárom-Esztergom county in general during the Ice Age our opinion is corroborated that this region, as also later on during our history, offered specially favourable conditions for the existence of humans. Remains of Homo sapiens fossilis are known from Hungary in very low number, from the Istállóskő and the Balla caves. The three great steps of human evolution can be paralleled to three great archaeo17