Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 83. (Budapest 1991)

Tóth, T.: Morphological modification, its causality: the case of Carpathian Basin from Neolithic to modern times

nological diapasons of females are higher than for males. In the last two millennia, in the Avar and in the Arpadian ages regional cranimorphological complexes - well separated from each other - can be observed ((Figs 7-8). In these two millennia the approximative equilibrium between the gracilic narrow-faced (hypomorph) and the massive broad-faced (hypermorph) components were established. On the basis of the coordinated topographic data of the cranial index and the bizygomatic breadth a significant nearness can be observed between the morphological complexes of conquering and recent Hungarians (Fig. 9). Together with the analogies from the Avar and Arpadian periods a genealogical sequence of the morphological pecularities can be supposed in the last two millennia. In this chronological phase became manifested the time- and spaceboundedness of the modification connected with the morphological trends and the substratic components (through the mutual effect of relaxed directional and balancing selection). Therefore, the question of causality is unavoidable. II. The morphological modification of the craniofacial subsystem was predisponated more or less by the natural environment and by socio-economic circumstances. First it is important to consider the time-factor. In the prehistoric chronological diapason the infuence of the natural environment was more significant, because the socio-economic conditions were less developed, on the other hand, the population density was smaller than in the last four millennia. The inbreeding in the microregional and/or local groups might have occurred more frequently in the Neolithic than in the protohistoric and historic millennia. The Upper-Palaeolithic-Mesolithic period the natural selection lasted for forty thousand years (time-interval for two thousand generations) in which opportunity for expressing phenotypic plasticity, directional selection and subspecific morphological modification was greater than in the time-interval from the Neolithic till modern times (FINKEL 1979). Urging for more multilateral analyses of Men-Environment interaction, SALZANO (1975a, b, 1978) pointed out that "the time available for the action of evolutionary factors since the Neolithic (about 500 generations) is not long". Selective stress connected with the gradual improvement of socio-economic circumstances became significantly relaxed from the Neolithic till the historic millennia in the Carpathian subcontinent, too. In spite of this it has not ceased either in the prenatal or in the postnatal ontogenesis. The increase of the population density stimulated outbreeding (the regulative function of exogamy), i.e. the modification of morphological trends, the oscillations of intergroup variability. These involved the taxonomic continuum of the subcontinental and/or microregional groups of the singular-specific Homo, and what is more their secondary trait-mosaicity. The environmental dependence of the individuum penetrating into ontogenesis cannot be denied. Though some selective stress remained in the prenatal ontogenesis during the historic millennia, too. The indirect (maternal-intrauterine-nutritive) effect of the natural environment was of primary significance in the development of phenotypic ecosensitivity, for the prenatal and perinatal osteopoesis influencing the morphological modification manifested in the whole of the postnatal ontogenesis. The abovementioned approximative equilibrium of the gracile and massive osteological components in the last two millennia of the Carpathian subcontinent may be interpreted as