350 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



skeletons were found ; and a few copper implements and 

 gold ornaments remained to confirm the inference from the 

 pottery as to its position in the series. 



31. Settlements and tombs of the same character have 

 since been noted in many islands of the Archipelago, especi- 

 ally in Syros, Melos, Antiparos and Amorgos ; and this 

 " Cycladic " type of ornament and general civilisation is not 

 only closely paralleled by the earliest remains at Mykense, 

 Tiryns, Athens and elsewhere, but is connected by an 

 almost continuous series with the fully developed art and 

 civilisation of the Mykensean Age itself. 



32. It should be noted that though Cyprus appears to 

 have exported its own manufactures to the yEgean during 

 this period, it was not in a position to influence or direct 

 the Cycladic culture. But still less is there any trace that 

 the younger and more vivacious school reacted at all upon 

 the elder ; this was reserved for the full-grown culture of 

 Mykense. 



2,7,. It is at this period that the Cretan evidence, though 

 as yet miserably incomplete, becomes of crucial importance. 

 Crete shares, to begin with, the early bronze age civilisa- 

 tion of Hissarlik and Cyprus, resembling the latter more 

 closely ; but it is not till the Cycladic stage is reached that 

 we have more than the most fragmentary evidence. In the 

 Cycladic period and in the succeeding age Crete was almost 

 literally tKaro^woXiQ, the " island of an hundred cities," and 

 certainly exercised a vigorous and continuous, perhaps even 

 a predominant influence upon /Egean civilisation. At this 

 point the wealth and variety of Cretan decorative art become 

 conspicuous, and a chronological point of the very first im- 

 portance and a clue to the origin of some characteristic 

 motives are given by the recent demonstration of a frequent 

 and fertile intercourse with Egypt in the time of the twelfth 

 Dynasty. On the one hand, a very peculiar and local fabric 

 of pottery from Kamarais in Crete has been found in twelfth 

 Dynasty layers at Kahun ; on the other, the Cretan types 

 of bronze implements are typically Egyptian, and twelfth 

 Dynasty scarabs were not only frequently imported, but 

 commonly imitated. In fact it is very probably from this 



