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

Fig. 13- Sorb falling into the clefts of the area, it is also possible that by joint activity (!), chasing, they actually made the animals fall down. It is also possible that they collected and transferred home anything edible from large distances and that the animal origin protein was also the product of simple collecting. It is, however, clear that the faunal list of the Vértesszőlős archaeological site does not reflect a natural ratio of herbivores/predators that would be observed without the human interference. That is, any way they obtained their meet they were selecting and preferred the meat of herbivores. The contradiction between the size of the tools used by early men (3-4 cm) and the size of the animals on their menu cannot be resolved as yet. It can be taken for certain that none of these small worked pebbles could be used as arms but they are seemingly not very well fit even to the butchering, skinning of large animals with thick skin and great fur as well as splitting the bones. The presence of the animal word is also documented in a unique way on this site. The surface of the calcareous tuff plane at site nr. III. is covered by animal foot-prints. The conditions for the formation of the prints are clear: the footprints of animals who went to the spring for drinking or wallowing were preserved in the silty mud covered with the walls of the basin. The water evaporated, the fine print of the footsteps petrified and was covered by several meters of loose sediments till the excavation of László Vértes. The composition of the species deduced from the footprints is essentially different from the ratio of game reflected by the bones. The environs of the natural drinking places is a source of food that could be reached with lesser energy. Finally some words about the human remains. Vértesszőlős is still the only Lower Palaeolithic site in Hungary where not only the traces of human activity but also man himself was found. During the washing and selection of the cultural layer in 1964, the (milk) canine tooth and fragments of a molar 32