Dr. Nemcsics Ákos:
Adalékok a középkori kerektemplomaink eredetéhez

A number of the medieval churches in the Carpathian basin are rotundas, which with contemporary view looks special. They origin stirred up a lot of discussions, most based on the theory of adoption or copying. The ground planes of today’s buildings are mostly oblong or the combination of the same. The curved or circular ground plane is regarded as exceptional, deviating from the customary shapes. Today’s crowded settlements, due to their high building density requirements, prefer the rectangular arrangement for the more effective space utilization. This is of course has not always been the case. In the early architecture the circular ground plane was quite popular. In this present work we are trying to show the circular building foundation as a natural choice. We will show that not only  nature prefers the circular shape, but also our forefather’s architecture was dominated by the round shape, whichwas developed earlier, supported by the building technology of the rotundas.
We will also show that ritual buildings show a similar circular development. Due to the shape’s natural character we could make the legitimate assumption that they have developed independently from each other. As a result we do not need to think in the terms of general origin or adoption theory. This type of church architecture is more widely used within the Carpathian basin than outside of it. We can say that the reason for that can be find in the popularity of the early Hungarian yurt style architecture rather than in adoption.