
Samu is the nickname given to a fragmentary human
occipital bone
The occipital bone () is a cranial dermal bone and the main bone of the occiput (back and lower part of the skull). It is trapezoidal in shape and curved on itself like a shallow dish. The occipital bone overlies the occipital lobes of the c ...
(also known as "Vertesszolos man", or "Vertesszolos occipital") found in
Vértesszőlős
Vértesszőlős is a village in Komárom-Esztergom county, Hungary. It is most known for the archaeological site where a Middle Pleistocene human fossil, known as "Samu", was found.
History Prehistory
Vértesszőlős sits at the foot of the G ...
,
Central Transdanubia
Central Transdanubia ( hu, Közép-Dunántúl) is a statistical (NUTS 2) region of Hungary. The capital is Székesfehérvár. It is part of Transdanubia (NUTS 1) region. Central Transdanubia includes counties of Fejér, Komárom-Esztergom, and Ve ...
,
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croa ...
.
The discovery was made on 21 August 1965 during a dig led by , and the fossil was named ''Sámuel'', 21 August being the
name day
In Christianity, a name day is a tradition in many countries of Europe and the Americas, among other parts of Christendom. It consists of celebrating a day of the year that is associated with one's baptismal name, which is normatively that of ...
of biblical judge
Samuel
Samuel ''Šəmūʾēl'', Tiberian: ''Šămūʾēl''; ar, شموئيل or صموئيل '; el, Σαμουήλ ''Samouḗl''; la, Samūēl is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the bi ...
in Hungarian tradition.
It has since become widely known as ''Samu'', a Hungarian short form of the name.
Hungarian anthropologist
Andor Thoma
Andor Thoma (November 30, 1928, Magyaróvár – May 31, 2003, Paris) was a Hungarian anthropologist. His studies focused on the evolution of Paleolithic hominids. Some of his major works were the examination of the dentition of the Subalyuk Ne ...
(1928–2003) initially described it as ''Homo erectus seu sapiens paleohungaricus''. The fossil at the time was believed to be about 500,000 years old, and some literature of the 1970s classifies it as ''Homo erectus''.
Analyses performed in the 1990s have revealed a significantly younger age, at between 250,000 and 300,000 years old (
Mindel glaciation
The Mindel glaciation (german: Mindel-Kaltzeit, also ''Mindel-Glazial'', ''Mindel-Komplex'' or, colloquially, ''Mindel-Eiszeit'') is the third youngest glacial stage in the Alps. Its name was coined by Albrecht Penck and Eduard Brückner, who na ...
), and the fossil is now classified as ''
Homo heidelbergensis
''Homo heidelbergensis'' (also ''H. sapiens heidelbergensis''), sometimes called Heidelbergs, is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed during the Middle Pleistocene. It was subsumed as a subspecies of '' H. erectus'' ...
''.
[István Fzy, István Szente, ''Fossils of the Carpathian Region'' (2013)]
p. 412
The itself had been discovered by Márton Pécsi in 1962. Also found at the site were two child teeth,
Abbevillian
Abbevillian (formerly also ''Chellean'') is a term for the oldest lithic industry found in Europe, dated to between roughly 600,000 and 400,000 years ago.
The original artifacts were collected from road construction sites on the Somme river near ...
stone tools and a fireplace. The site is now open to the public.
A replica of the Samu occipital bone is on exhibit in the local museum (the original is kept in the
Hungarian National Museum
The Hungarian National Museum ( hu, Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum) was founded in 1802 and is the national museum for the history, art, and archaeology of Hungary, including areas not within Hungary's modern borders, such as Transylvania; it is not to ...
), as well as associated tools and fossilized animal footprints.
[
"Samu" has become a common name for plastic skeletons shown in biology classes in Hungarian student slang.
]
References
{{reflist
Homo heidelbergensis fossils
Fossils of Hungary
Tourist attractions in Komárom-Esztergom County