The world of the first farmers and rondel builders. Studies on the Neolithic cultures in western Slovakia FULL VERSION ON RESEARCH GATE (original) (raw)

2024, The world of the first farmers and rondel builders. Studies on the Neolithic cultures in western Slovakia

Slovakia as a small country in the centre of Europe, with area of approx. 50,000 km2, is geomorphologically and culturally divided into the flat and hilly western and more rugged eastern Slovakia. Northern and part of central Slovakia are covered with mountain ranges. With the exception of the Late Linear Culture settlement in the Váh river valley between the Vysoké Tatry and Nízke Tatry mountain ranges and in Spiš, these mountainous areas of Slovakia were uninhabited until the Eneolithic. Western Slovakia and the development in the northern part of western Hungary were a cultural unit – in the Linear Pottery culture period as well as in the course of the following Lengyel culture. Eastern Slovakia belonged to the Tisza river basin in terms of hydrology, and culturally, it was part of the Neolithic cultures in the territories north of the Körös river. Southern parts of central Slovakia were culturally associated with development at the hills of northern Hungary. The geomorphological and cultural duality of Slovakia in the Neolithic requires separate investigation of settlement in eastern and western Slovakia. The chapter on origin of the Neolithic and spreading of the Neolithic way of life from the Near East through Anatolia and southeastern Europe uses results of our own investigation in Bulgaria (Pavúk 2016; Pavúk/Bakamska 2021) to suggest the trajectory of arrival of production economy in central Europe – by diffusion rather than by migration and colonization of populations. The assumed migration waves cannot be synchronized with the archaeologically defined autonomous Neolithic cultures from Anatolia to central Europe. The archaeological cultures from the Anatolian Plateau to central Europe documented by sequences, such as Çatal Höyük, Hacilar, Ulucak and Demircihüyük in western Turkey, Protosesklo – Sesklo – Dimini in Thessaly, Nea Nikomedeia A and B in Macedonia, Hoca Çeşme and Karanovo in Thracia, Protostarčevo – Starčevo in southern and Danubian Balkans extending to southern Hungary and finally, in the northern Carpathian basin, two Linear Pottery cultures, evolved continuously in the whole Neolithic within geographically delimited territories without being homogenized by any migrating populations. Around 6400 BC, the climate and ecological conditions near the Aegean Sea allowed expansion of production economy and the Neolithic way of life to the Balkans and central Europe.