PREHISTORIC MAN. 291 



to a belief that the old race was of dark complexion ; to an 

 early identification of its representatives in Greece and the 

 ^gean with the earliest stratum of population in Italy and 

 Sicily ; and to a hazy attempt to express a relationship 

 vaguely felt to exist between these autochthonous peoples 

 of Greece and Italy and the inhabitants of Libya, Egypt, 

 and the Syrian coast. 



72. In the strongest contrast with the autochthonous 

 " Pelasgians," and the Ionian Greeks who seem to have 

 been regarded as most closely akin to them, stand the 

 immigrant Hellenes, whom Herodotus regarded as most 

 purely represented in the Dorians, though reasons have 

 lately been shown for holding that the Achseans had at least 

 as good a claim to the title. Their progress was from the 

 North, and in Peloponnese at least the last of them to 

 arrive were never fully naturalised among the older race. 

 Their ideal of beauty was fair and ruddy, and this type 

 continued to assert itself in Hellenic art, side by side with 

 the brunette type of the aborigines, at least as late as the 

 close of the fifth century B.C., though in Graeco-Roman 

 painting it has already become rare ; and in Byzantine and 

 Romaic art, as well as among the modern Greeks, it prac- 

 tically dies out altogether. 



J2,- The stories of immigrations over-sea, from Asia 

 Minor, Phoenicia and Egypt, are not in all probability to be 

 regarded as analogous with that of the coming of the 

 Northern Hellenes. They invariably refer either to indi- 

 vidual adventurers, such as Danaos or Pelops, or, as in the 

 case of the Lybian Kyklopes, to wonder-working craftsmen 

 summoned for a specific purpose, and are clearly attempts 

 to explain the introduction of what appeared to be foreign 

 elements in the prehistoric civilisation of the yEgeans, by con- 

 necting them with the arrival of semi-mythical personages. 



74. Until the first quarter of the present century this tra- 

 ditional account passed practically unchallenged ; and in most 

 quarters survives in all its principal features, though hardly 

 a single detailed statement has escaped critical modification. 



75. During the second and third quarters of the cen- 

 tury the principal criticisms which have passed upon it have 



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