PREHISTORIC MAN. 73 



and Assyrian influences which have been detected in the 

 Mykenaean art, and on a body of Hellenic tradition which 

 represented the Etruscans (Tyrrhenians) who in any case 

 appear to have reached their Italian home by sea, as ethno- 

 logically related to the Lydians. Excessive stress also is 

 perhaps laid on the points of contact between Mykenaean 

 and Tyrrhenian civilisation. Mykenaean importations, and 

 imitations of them, are not infrequent in Etruscan, as in 

 Sicilian and Venetic tombs ; but there is no clear break at 

 the beginning of the Mykenaean series in Italy such as 

 would be required by the theory of a general immigration 

 of the representatives of an Anatolian culture. Moreover, 

 the complete absence (with the exception of Hissarlik) of 

 Mykenaean city-sites, and the excessive rarity even of single 

 Mykenaean objects on the Anatolian coast, are as fatal to 

 this as to the Karian theory already mentioned. 



55. Yet another variant of the Anatolian theory makes 

 Mykenaean art the product of early Hellenic settlers on the 

 Asia Minor coast, under Phoenician and Orientalising influ- 

 ences. This view depends upon the assumption (Science 

 Progress, 1896, p. 353) that Mykenaean civilisation lasted 

 on, even if it did not wholly arise, in the centuries after, 

 rather than before the tenth ; and stands or falls with that 

 chronological theory. It is a further obstacle to its accept- 

 ance, that, as already noticed, Mykenaean objects have at 

 all events hitherto eluded observation on the sites of all the 

 Anatolian towns, and appears to be confined, on this side of 

 the yEgean, to the islands which fringe the coast ; again 

 with the exception of the late or sub-Mykenaean objects 

 which have been found in half-barbarous native tombs at 

 Assarlik, Mylasa, Tschangli and in the neighbourhood of 

 Sardis. 



56. A Phoenician theory of the origin of Mykenaean 

 civilisation was of course early in the field. Hellenic 

 tradition had accepted a Phoenician thalassocracy over 

 almost the whole Mediterranean at a period subsequent to 

 that of Minos ; an extensive Phoenician commerce in the 

 /Egean as elsewhere, and Phoenician settlements on many 

 points of the /Egean coast : and the immature philology, 



