PREHISTORIC MAN. 71 



for the recognition of these masterpieces. And the new 

 material appeared at a moment when literary and philo- 

 logical criticisms had in many quarters combined to weaken 

 the authority of the Hellenic, and particularly the Homeric 

 tradition of a Golden Age, of which Hellenism should be 

 regarded as a Renascence. Consequently the ingenuity 

 of archaeologists has been largely directed rather to the 

 indentification of foreign and imported elements, in the 

 later stages of ^Egean culture, than to the affiliation of 

 these to an indigenous parentage, and to the conception of 

 ^Egean culture as simply that corner of a larger Mediter- 

 ranean and European culture which was most favourably 

 placed for expansion on its own lines, but not to be re- 

 garded as distinct from that larger whole, simply because 

 in its later stages it had so expanded. 



51. The large crop of theories of ^Egean origins may be 

 roughly divided into three groups. If /Egean civilisation 

 was not mainly indigenous — and this was for a while the 

 prevailing impression — it must either have been derived 

 from an Asiatic, or an African source. If from an Asiatic, 

 two routes seemed to be open, by the land route of Asia 

 Minor and the eastern coast of the /Egean, or by the Syrian 

 and Phoenician coast ; these being the two main lines of 

 communication with the Euphrates Valley which remained 

 open and in use at the beginning of Hellenic history. If on 

 the other hand from an African, which before the detection 

 of an early Libyan civilisation meant an Egyptian source, 

 then the route must either have been again via Phoenicia, 

 or more directly along the north coast of Africa ; but in 

 spite of Homeric indications, the latter does not seem to 

 have been seriously considered until quite recently. To 

 take the Anatolian theories first and then the Syro- 

 Phcenician : 



52. The " Karian Theory ' of Drs. Kohler and 

 Dummler rested upon Hellenic traditions of an occupa- 

 tion of many of the islands, some part of Crete, and several 

 points of the mainland of Greece, by Karians, or according 

 to another version by Leleges from Karia. This thalasso- 

 cracy had been succeeded by the Cretan thalassocracy of 



