Garam Éva szerk.: Between East and West - History of the peoples living in hungarian lands (Guide to the Archaeological Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum; Budapest, 2005)

The environment of ancient man (Katalin T. Bíró, Zsófia Medzihradszky, Andrea Torma, István Vörös)

Hungarian Plain remained largely tree-less, the last instance of a steppe created by natural, climatic conditions in Hungary. Waters became shallower and boggy owing to the long dry spells. The appearance of the first alkali areas can be dated to this phase (although they are not identical with the current ones). The Atlantic (or Oak period) marked the climatic optimum of the Holocene, spanning the period between 6000-5500 and 3000 B.C. A warm and moist climate dominated throughout Europe. Oak woods spread over the entire territory of Hungary. The closed, mixed deciduous forests were dominated by oak, linden, elm and ash. These were in many spots succeeded by pure oak woods by the second half of this phase, while beech and hornbeam appeared at higher altitudes. Waters were revived by the high precipitation and were soon populated by both floating (duckweed, frog-bit) and submerged (broad-leaved pondweed, water milfoil, coontail) pondweeds. Grove and swamp forests spread in the higher, dry areas beside water. The Neolithic and the Early Copper Age fall within the Atlantic phase. In view of the density of archaeological sites, the impact of human activity on the landscape must also be taken into consideration. The Sub-Boreal (or Beech phase) lasted from 3000 to 800 B.C. The climate turned slightly cooler, resembling the current one. Beech and hornbeam colonised the central mountain ranges, while mixed ash and alder woods flourished elsewhere, with grove forests of oak, ash and elm lining river banks. The human manipulation of the environment became more intense. This phase coincided with the Bronze Age, marked by the spread of metallurgy and the construction of hillforts. The Sub-Atlantic phase, beginning around 800 B.C., did not cause any major alterations in the vegetation cover. The climate did not change to an extent which would have had a significant impact on the environment. In contrast, human activity shaped the landscape to an increasing extent. The peoples of the Iron Age, the Roman Age in Pannónia, the 11 Migration period and the Middle Ages had a lasting impact on the environment. DOMESTIC PLANTS During the Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic, prehistoric communities acquired their plant food exclusively by gathering the edible plants growing in the environment. Plant species enabling the accumulation of sizeable food reserves were unavailable at the time since they were not native to the Carpathian Basin. These species, and the know-how of crop cultivation, were brought to this region in the Neolithic by the agrarian groups arriving from the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean. The Körös-Starcevo groups settling in the southern part of the Great Hungarian Plain were the first foodproducing communities in Central Europe. The various plants consumed and exploited during different historical periods and the development of crop cultivation can be reconstructed from the plant remains recovered during excavations. On the testimony of the botanical finds, Neolithic communities did not specialise in the cultivation of one specific crop. They preferred hulled wheats; after ripening, the spikelets fall down and the grains are enclosed by a tough husk. Since the grains were harvested with the husk, they had to be threshed and parched before they could be ground into flour. The most common hulled wheat species were einkom and emmer, whose charred grains and spikelets have been found in abundance on Neolithic sites. These two wheat species retained their dominance throughout prehistory, even though the improvement of cultivation techniques resulted in the spread of cereals with higher yields. Spelt is one of the most sensitive hulled wheat species, but its yield is also one of the highest. Spelt wheat occurs occasionally on Neolithic sites, although it only became more widespread during the