Period In Hungary Research Articles

Anomaly or pathology: the Stafne defect as seen in archaeological material and modern clinical practice

The high incidence of the Stafne defect found in Avar period from Hungary and Plains Archaic populations has prompted anthropological inquiry into the usefulness of this anomaly/pathology in the description of earlier human populations. However, in order to treat properly its occurrence within and between population samples, it was first necessary to determine if the defect was an anomaly or pathology. To this end, data were obtained from field sites, museum collections and material previously reported in the literature. A total sample of 5519 mandibles from archaeological sites produced 59 (1·069%) Stafne defects, while the clinical literature showed 126 cases from 22,301 minimum observations reported (0·565%). Analysis of the reported clinical cases, where surgical procedures and histological examination of the contents were performed, suggests that the Stafne defect is an anomaly rather than a pathology and that a descriptive differential diagnosis is easily made—this is true in both clinical and archaeological materials. Additionally, the relatively high incidence of the defect in some population samples (6·06% in Fehértó-A-Szeged, Avar period in Hungary) and its absence in many other population samples suggests the usefulness of this defect as a non-metric morphological trait in the analysis of biological distance between and among population samples.

Michael Polanyi, 12 March 1891- 22 February 1976

Michael Polanyi was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1891. He used to recall how his father, a civil engineer and entrepreneur involved in the planning and development of railways, would return from his travels in Germany and the West with tales of tunnels and washouts and with new scientific and educational ideas. But, as a result of some unfortunate mishap, he lost all his fortune in 1899 when Michael was eight years old. This placed a severe financial strain on the family which was greatly aggravated in 1905 when Michael’s father died. Michael or Mishi, as his early friends called him throughout life, then earned some of the money needed in the family by tutoring other high school students. The widowed mother, despite straitened means, was able to remain the centre of a social and intellectual circle of which many of the young poets, painters and scholars of that period in Hungary were members. Thus it was that his mother’s persistent interest in social problems, in poetry and art, came to have a great influence on Michael’s emotional development. He had two brothers and two sisters, older than him, who were all, in their ways, distinguished.