ANCIENT EGYPT, ASIA MINOR, AND CRETE 
a development. Blessed with a climate on the whole de- 
lightful, and lying in the midst of the most beautiful of 
seas, it was within easy reach of the great civilized regions 
both of western Asia and of Egypt. In general moun- 
tainous, its highest peaks approach or even exceed 8,000 
feet above the Mediterranean. There are deep ravines, 
in some of whose clefts snow remains the year around; and 
caves, where religious ceremonies were once held. In 
ancient times there extended over the island forests of 
cypress and chestnut and oak, in which roamed wild 
cattle, goats, and other animals. 
Crete has thus far yielded no traces of the men of the 
Old Stone Age, nor of the transitional period which fol- 
lowed. The island seems to have been discovered and 
settled only during the New Stone Age, perhaps 7,000 or 
8,000 years ago, by men of the same physical type as the 
bulk of the Mediterranean races which we have already 
described. 
Neolithic man in Crete seems to have subsisted mainly 
on his herds and flocks, and only in a minor degree on agri- 
culture. However, he knew from the first how to make 
coarse pottery, and he used knives not of flint but of 
obsidian, or “volcanic glass,” brought from the eae 
ing island of Melos. 
Even during their New Stone Age the Cretans were in 
contact with Egypt, and it may have been from the latter 
that they learned the use of copper. Thanks to their posi- 
tion, they could rather easily procure tin from central 
Europe, and they were not long in developing a most re- 
markable Bronze Age civilization, based essentially upon 
their maritime trade with other lands. Hence they built 
up the earliest distinctively naval power known to us. The 
influence of the sea was strikingly reflected in their lives 
and particularly in their art. 
For the most outstanding characteristic of the Cretans 
was their artistic sense. Here they seem to have been far 
less rigidly bound by their religious ideas than were the 
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