506 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



traced to Egypt, to Rhodes, Cyprus, Epirus where Dodona 

 was their ancient shrine -and lastly to various parts of Italy. 



Moreover, the Pelasgians were traditionally the civilising 



element, who taught people to make bread, to yoke 

 Culture" tne ox to tne pl u g n > and to measure land. It would 



appear from these and other allusions that there were 

 memories of still earlier aborigines, amongst whom the Pelasgians 

 appear as a cultured people, introducing perhaps the arts and 

 industries of the pre-Mykenasan Age. But the assumption, 

 based on no known data, is unnecessary, and it seems more 

 reasonable to look on this culture as locally developed, to some 

 extent under eastern (Egyptian, Babylonian, Hittite?) influences 1 . 

 Here it is important to note that the Pelasgians were credited 

 with a knowledge of letters 2 , and all this may perhaps be taken as 

 sufficient confirmation of our second postulate. At least if a 

 writing system be regarded as the highest achievement of civilised 

 man, there need no longer be any hesitation in ascribing all the 

 other arts and industries of the "ygean school" to our Pelasgians. 

 That the Hellenes were at first, and probably long after their 

 advent in Greece, an illiterate people, might almost be inferred 

 from the solitary reference in Homer to writing of any kind 3 , the 

 more so since the writer is a Pelasgian king of Argos. The 

 reference thus shows that the Pelasgians were at that time a 

 cultured people, who corresponded with each other on both sides 

 of the .Egean, apparently in a script now revealed by the researches 



This idea of an independent evolution of western (European) culture 

 is steadily gaining ground, and is strenuously advocated, amongst others, by 

 M. Salomon Reinach, who has made a vigorous attack on what he calls the 

 "oriental mirage," i.e. the delusion which sees nothing but Asiatic or Egyptian 

 influences everywhere. Sergi of course goes further, regarding the Mediter- 

 ranean (Iberian, Ligurian, Pelasgian) cultures not only as local growths, but as 

 independent both of Asiatics and of the rude Aryan hordes, who came rather 

 as destroyers than civilisers. This is one of the fundamental ideas pervading 

 the whole of his Arii c Italici, and some earlier writings. 



1 Pausanias, ill. 20, 5. 



3 The famous ffrj/^ara \vypd "fatal signs" of //. VI. 168, called at 1. 178 

 <r??Ma KaKov, "evil script," written in a "folding tablet" by Proetus, king of 

 Argos, and addressed to his father-in-law, the king of Lycia, to compass the 

 destruction of the bearer, Bellerophon. 



