PREHISTORIC MAN, ETC. 341 



are practically indestructible, even though the vessels which 

 they composed have been shattered. Moreover, all the 

 unrefined varieties of clay, and many even of the best 

 levigated, present features by which their place of origin 

 may be recognised. Consequently, in this material, 

 modelling and decoration can be perpetuated as in no other 

 way ; and, what is more important, the intrinsic worthless- 

 ness of earthenware has often preserved it from the dis- 

 placement and destruction which almost inevitably overtake 

 objects of gold, bronze, and marble. The resulting pre- 

 ponderance of ceramographic references in the bibliography 

 which follows these notes must therefore be taken as 

 indicating the character of the evidence which is most 

 accessible, and of the method which has actually proved 

 most fruitful : not that the pottery really took so large a 

 place in primitive art as might be inferred from its actual 

 abundance, and its scientific importance. 



10. Consequently the study of Early Man in the JEgean 

 has entered within a few years on a new phase, and pre- 

 sents the following problems: (1) To reconstruct in detail 

 the history of the Mykenaean civilisation ; its origin, its charac- 

 ter, range and influence, and its decline ; (2) to investigate the 

 causes of that relapse into barbarism, which both literature 

 and archaeology attest ; (3) to determine the ethnological 

 position of the race, or races, who originated, maintained, 

 and overthrew it, and their relationship with the historic 

 inhabitants of the same area ; and (4) as a special study, to 

 determine the relation in which the Hellenic traditions of 

 the Achaean Age, and the lays in which they were preserved, 

 stand to the civilisation which they certainly seem to com- 

 memorate, and which owes its discovery simply to the 

 application to them of a new method of criticism. 



(1) THE FIRST KNOWN CULTURE OF THE EASTERN 



MEDITERRANEAN. 



1 1. Palaeolithic Man seems to have left no traces in the 

 Levant comparable with those in North Europe, or with 

 the plateau and upper-gravel flints of the Nile Valley. But 

 the scarcity of evidence is partly due to the indifference of 



