 Hungarian prehistory ( Hungarian : <unk> <unk> ) spans the period of history of the Hungarian people , or Magyars , which started with the separation of the Hungarian language from other Finno @-@ Ugric or Ugric languages around 800 BC , and ended with the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin around 895 AD . Based on the earliest records of the Magyars in Byzantine , Western European , and Hungarian chronicles , scholars considered them for centuries to have been the descendants of the ancient Scythians and Huns . This historiographical tradition disappeared from mainstream history after the realization of similarities between the Hungarian language and the Uralic languages in the late 18th century . Thereafter , linguistics became the principal source of the study of the Hungarians ' ethnogenesis . In addition , chronicles written between the 9th and 15th centuries , the results of archaeological research and folklore analogies provide information on the Magyars ' early history . 
