writing (recently deciphered) which greatly faciliated rec- 

 ords as compared with the previous slow hieroglyphics. 

 The Cretians used copper and bronz, and migrated to 

 nearby Greece. Crete itself was ruined by Indo-European 

 invaders around 1400 B.C., but these people absorbed 

 the Aegean culture and developed into a number of City 

 States in the Greek Peninsula during the succeeding cen- 

 turies. These States, Sparta, Athens, Corinth, and Thebes, 

 provided the stimulating environment in which rapid cul- 

 tural and intellectual advances were made, and new ideas 

 could be tried out. The Greeks employed the Phoenician 

 alphabet devised by these seafarers, founders of the great 

 city of Carthage in North Africa (c. 790 B.C.). Among 

 the great Greeks of this period were the poet Homer, the 

 dramatists Aeschylus and Sophocles, the statesman Peri- 

 cles, the mathematician Pythagoras, the philosophers Soc- 

 rates, Plato and Aristotle, and the energetic military Alexan- 

 der the Great (310 B.C.), Alexander came from the 

 small state of Macedonia, but soon conquered all Greece. 

 His armies, the greatest and most modernly equipped 

 with cavalry existing in his time, were able to destroy 

 the large Persian Empire, resulting in the further spread 

 of Greek culture. Science and philosophy advanced rapid- 

 ly in the newly founded Alexandria in Egypt, one of 

 many new cities built. Euclid (280 B.C.) drew up the 

 basis of geometry, and Archimedes (240 B.C.) advanced 

 both mathematics and physics together. The Greek think- 

 ers clearly perceived the underlying order of Nature, and 

 made use of their scientific discoveries in practical life. 

 But, although they speculated on the atomicity of matter 

 (Democritus), and on the nature of life (Aristotle), stu- 

 died astronomy and geography (Ptolemy, c. 130 A.D.), 

 and gained some knowledge of the human body and the 



22 



