Yearbook 2008
Hungary. According to
Countryaah reports, Hungary in March recognized Kosovo's
independence, prompting Serbia to call its ambassador from
neighboring countries. Belgrade, the capital of Serbia,
stated that countries that make such a decision cannot have
good relations with Serbia. In Hungary, there were concerns
about how the ethnic Hungarians in the Serbian province of Vojvodina would be treated.
In the spring, Hungary led the demands of several new EU
countries who considered that the Union's targets for
reduced CO2 emissions were unfair and too expensive for the
old Eastern bloc countries with their strong dependence on
coal, oil and gas. According to Hungary, the goals were
based on the wrong conditions when they were based on 2005.
Hungary wanted them to start from 1990 and take into account
the sharp reductions in emissions that several former
communist countries made after the disintegration of the
planned economies.
In April, the Peace Democrats left the government, and
Prime Minister Gyurcsány and his Socialist Party ended up in
a minority. However, the Peace Democrats pledged to continue
supporting the government in Parliament, including when it
came to accelerating the transition to the euro.
This autumn's international financial crisis had severe
repercussions for Hungary, which had large foreign loans,
large budget deficits, declining exports and weak growth.
The forint currency lost rapidly in value and the strong
government and private borrowing in euros made the economy
vulnerable. The central bank raised the interest rate by
several percent, but the government saw the need to seek
help from the EU through the European Central Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF). In a joint crisis
package, which also included the World Bank, Hungary offered
loans totaling $ 25.1 billion and thus became the first EU
country to receive such support.
When Sweden's Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt visited
Hungary in November, his colleague Gyurcsány explained that
the old and richer EU countries cannot impose unreasonable
demands on the new ones on reduced carbon dioxide emissions.
He said that both sides must compromise. The Swedish
government proposed a Swedish-Hungarian initiative, in which
countries such as Sweden invest in the east so that
emissions are reduced there, but investors can also offset
the reductions.
In December, a Budapest court ordered the right-wing
movement of the Guardian Association to be dissolved due to
persecution of Roma.
The Prehistory of Hungary
Hungary's prehistory is considered the country's history
in the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.
Stone Age
In Hungary, one of the oldest settlements in the world
has been found with traces of human learning. Fauna remains
from the Mindel period and so-called "chopping tools", which
are the oldest stone tools we know, attest to a very high
age. In the western part of the country bones of Neanderthal
people and tools of the Mousterian nature have been found. A
discovery from the cave Istállósskö is from the Aurignacien
culture and dated to be approx. 40,000 years old.
Characteristic of younger Paleolithic times is that the
tools have improved. It also seems that more specialized
hunting has been conducted. After the last ice age, the
natural basis probably deteriorated, because it is
relatively sparse with findings from Mesolithic time.
Younger Stone Age (Neolithic Age) is defined by the
introduction of agriculture. In Hungary, the settlement of
Körös is both the oldest and most important from early
Neolithic times. The settlement dates back to the 5th
millennium BC. In addition to farming, people have also been
hunting and retreating. Körös shows a close relationship
with Starčevo in Yugoslavia. No traces of early Neolithic
settlement have been found north of Körös. Probably
Mesolithic hunters and Sankers have lived here.
In Late Neolithic, peasant culture gained a strong
Mediterranean character. Continuous settlement over a long
period of time has created so-called town heaps (tells). Old
houses were just leveled with the earth and new ones built
on top. This, together with other debris, led to the
villages lying on piles rising above the plain. Towards the
end of the Late Neolithic period, such settlements ended,
and arable farming appears to have lost its dominant
position in favor of feuding.
The Bronze Age
The Bronze Age started just 2300 years before our era.
Many tax finds show that the art of making bronze was high.
Throughout this period a number of different cultural groups
have lived side by side. People's movements have probably
occurred.
Iron Age
In the Iron Age, too, there were many different cultural
groups in the area of present-day Hungary. The shooters
left their mark on the cultural scene in the central Danube
area for a while. In the 300s BC needed Celtic tribes into
the country. These came for a while to dominate in northern
and western Hungary. In 12–11 BC the land was conquered by
Tiberius, and became part of the Roman province of Pannonia.
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