EARLY CIVILIZATIONS 17 



obtained for surveying not only the ancient classical world of Greece 

 and Rome, but also the modern world in which we live. Sir 

 Arthur Evans. 



AEGEAN CIVILIZATION IN THE BRONZE AGE. The newer 

 European civilization had also its prehistoric times, and the 

 investigations and especially the excavations of the last half 

 century have revealed such treasures as the site of Homeric Troy, 

 the palace and tomb of Agamemnon, and the cities of Minos and 

 others of the sea kings of Crete. It is now known that the Trojan 

 War was fought about Hissarlik on the eastern shore of the Dar- 

 danelles; that Agamemnon's palace was at Mycenae in Greek 

 Argolis; and that Minos had his home and his naval base of 

 Mediterranean sea power on the island of Crete. In Mycenae 

 and in Crete the arts were highly developed. Painting, sculpture, 

 and pottery, tools, weapons, implements of various kinds, with 

 systems of water supply and drainage, testify to the remarkable 

 degree of civilization attained in the later Bronze Age, although 

 this has left behind it no written records and was formerly known 

 to us only through the poems of Homer. 



Even to classical students twenty, nay, ten years ago, Crete was 

 scarcely more than a land of legendary heroes and rationalized myths. 

 It is true that the first reported aeronautical display was made by a 

 youth of Cretan parentage, but in the absence of authenticated records 

 of the time and circumstances of his flight, scholars were sceptical of 

 his performance. And yet within less than ten short years we are 

 faced by a revolution hardly more credible than this story; we are 

 asked by archaeologists to carry ourselves back from A.D. 1910 to 

 1910 B.C., and witness a highly artistic people with palaces and treas- 

 ures and letters, of whose existence we had not dreamed. . . . 



The theme is a fresh one, because nothing was known of the subject 

 before 1900 ; it is important, because the Golden Age of Crete was the 

 forerunner of the Golden Age of Greece, and hence of all our western 

 culture. The connection between Minoan [Cretan] and Hellenic 

 civilization is vital, and not one of locality alone, as is the tie between 

 the prehistoric and the historic of America, but one of relationship. 

 Egypt may have been foster-mother to classical Greece, but the 

 mother, never forgotten by her child, was Crete. . . . 

 c 



