PREHISTORIC MAN, ETC. 349 



with a very faint blue : the pigment was evidently difficult to 

 obtain, and was used but sparingly by the native artist. 

 But meanwhile the discovery of the art of ornamenting the 

 natural surface of clay vessels with an encaustic umber pig- 

 ment, wherever it may have originated, seems to appear 

 in Cyprus (where umber is extensively worked) at least 

 as early as anywhere else ; first in company with, but later 

 almost wholly superseding, the older mode of incising linear 

 ornaments on a prepared and polished surface. 



29. The simply painted pottery is followed, though not 

 immediately, by several other fabrics which, though probably 

 native to Cyprus, are represented in some quantity on 

 Egyptian sites of the twelfth Dynasty and later dates, and 

 also in equivalent layers in the stratified mound of Tell-el- 

 Hesy, in the "Hittite" Sinjirli, and sporadically else- 

 where ; one very characteristic variety, with dark body, 

 white chalky slip, and black almost glossy paint, has been 

 found even so far afield as the Island of Thera, the Acro- 

 polis of Athens, and the " Sixth City" of Hissarlik. 



30. The specimen from Thera was found in company 

 with vases of a distinct and local style ; some still with 

 coloured surface and incised ornament, others with simple 

 painted patterns. The forms, however, and the whole 

 fabric, are quite distinct from those of Cyprus, and show a 

 graceful freedom which is quite new; though they are clearly 

 derivative from a ceramic of the Hissarlik type. Most 

 important of all, the wholly geometrical and mainly linear 

 ornament which has been hitherto universal is combined 

 with or replaced by a thoroughly and vigorously natural- 

 istic study of animal and vegetable forms, and, in combina- 

 tion with the latter, spiral motives appear, hitherto unknown 

 but destined to a long and eventful career. These naturalistic 

 and curvilineardesigns are notonlyrepresentedon the pottery, 

 but are also frescoed upon the plastered walls of the houses ; 

 they may consequently be taken to be locally characteristic. 

 The settlement at Thera was found beneath a thick bed of 

 volcanic debris, and had evidently been suddenly abandoned ; 

 metallic objects are rare, but this may well be due, as M. 

 Tsountas suggests, to the flight of the inhabitants — for no 



