From hunters to the first settlements

Palaeolithic hunters left stone tools and the bones of animals they hunted. Finds include remains of mammoths, aurochs and bison, together with chipped stone tools of the Gravettian culture. Reconstructed shelter and clothing supplement these material traces. Placing objects alongside reconstructed surroundings shows how fragmentary evidence becomes a museum's account of everyday life.

The next part concerns the Neolithic and Late Stone Age. Pottery, chipped and polished stone tools, bone objects and clay figures of humans and animals represent these periods. The material relates to the Želiezovce and Lengyel cultures and the later Baden complex. Finds come from settlements at Štúrovo, Bíňa, Svodín, Nové Zámky and Nitriansky Hrádok.

A long timber-post house of the Lengyel culture has been modelled on a ground plan excavated at Svodín. The model is not a prehistoric building moved into the museum: it depicts a structure identified through excavation. Original finds appear alongside reconstructed tools and buildings, offering different ways of representing the same past.