The Old Stone Age Collection came into being in 1951, in what was then the Museum’s Prehistoric Collection, with the bringing together of Palaeolithic finds kept at the Hungarian State Institute for Geology and at the Museum’s Department of Palaeontology. Its founder and first head was László Vértes, who, up until his death in 1968, added to the material by way of finds recovered during excavations. Since then, following excavations by Viola T. Dobosi and András Markó and donations of artefacts by amateur collectors, the collection is keeping, in an inventory running to many tens of thousands of entries, literally millions of stone and bone implements, along with artefacts linkable to the first appearance of art (Vértesszőlős is a find-site that is approximately 400,000 years old). This material is from the period which ended with the beginning of the Mesolithic Age, an event which can be dated to 9000–7000 years ago.