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)

HALL 2 - The Neolithic and the Copper Age (6000-2800 B.C.) (Nándor Kalicz, Pál Raczky)

HALL 2 The Neolithic and the Copper Age (6000-2800 B.C.) 1. THE EMERGENCE OF THE NEOLITHIC AND ITS FOOD PRODUCING ECONOMIES The onset of a warmer climate at the close of the Ice Age, from the 10th millennium B.C., resulted in the appearance of plants and animals resembling the current ones throughout Eurasia. The environmental changes called for an adaptation to the new circumstances, leading to the emergence of new subsistence patterns and new lifeways in the Ancient Near East during the 1 Oth—8th millennia B.C. The gradual shift to a production economy based on the domestication of plants and animals eventually led to conscious cereal agriculture and animal husbandry. The strong dependence of man on nature weakened as regards available food resources because prehistoric communities were now able to produce most of their food. Agrarian economies based on sheep and goat husbandry and on the farming of wheat and barley spread fairly rapidly to the Carpathian Basin through South-East Europe during the 7th millennium B.C. The "Neolithic package" was diffused from the Ancient Near East to the European heartland by the immigration of smaller population groups. The crucial element of this complex historical movement was the transfer of plants and animals, by human groups, to environmental zones to which they were not adapted. In contrast to subsistence based on hunting, fishing and gatering, the new production economy provided the conditions of a sedentary life-style. One of the sedentism-related changes was an increase in commonunity size. The early food producing communities were made up of several hundred people. The most striking imprints of this transformation in the archaeological record of the Carpatian Basin are the permanent settlements with daub houses built around a framework of timber posts, the polished, perforated stone tools and the durable, clay pottery vessels. The Early Neolithic buildings housed small families with five to eight membres. Pottery making became a craft activity 31 which often attained a high artistic perfection not only during the Neolithic and the Copper Age, but throughout later prehistory too. The form and decoration of pottery was the hallmark of a larger community; most archaeological cultures are distinguished from each other on the basis of their pottery. These major inventions were accompanied by various other innovations, such as spinning and weaving, baking and cooking, all of which made life easier and more comfortable, and played an important role in later development. The shift to sedentism also transformed the general mind-set and beliefs of these prehistoric communities. The "domesticated world" gradually overshadowed the "wild world" once production economies became widespread. Even the earliest, humble dwellings stood in sharp contrast with the uncolonised and unpredictable wild environment. The new lifestyle and novel experiences of existence had a lasting impact on the thought patterns of prehistoric man: the earlier balance between the natural and the artificial, man-made environment, between settlement and cemetery, i.e. between birth, life and death, between the "profane" and the "sacred" was gradually disrupted and came to represent separate aspects of human existence. This is to some extent reflected in the clay statuary, in part depicting the most significant elements of the surrounding environment and in part portraying images of a spiritual, supernatural world. The production economy disseminated from the Ancient Near East was transplanted to the southerly areas of the Carpathian Basin by the arrival of smaller population groups. Its appearance and spread can be linked to well definable archaeological cultures. It is hardly surprising that the find assemblages of these cultures reflect close ties with the Balkans and the Ancient Near East. The Körös and Starcevo cultures transmitted the new subsistence strategies and the accompanying material and spiritual culture in a virtually unchanged form. The different environment of