18 THE WONDERS OF ANCIENT CRETE 



ice-sheet round them during the Ice Age) and the 

 Mediterranean. Further south the vast barrier of 

 the desert blocked the way from the Atlantic to the 

 Red Sea. There would, therefore, be a relatively dense 

 population in North Africa, with every inducement to 

 social life and consequent progress. 



But this was not the easiest line of retreat from 

 Europe, and it is not the real line of the evolution of 

 civilization. Until twenty years ago we thought that 

 civilization developed first in Egypt and Mesopotamia, 

 and that it was gradually brought from there to 

 Europe. No one ever quite understood why it should 

 have begun in the valleys of the Nile and the 

 Euphrates, and a great deal of nonsense was talked 

 about the superior " wisdom of the East." Since 

 the year 1900, however, we have unearthed a most 

 remarkable ancient civilization in Crete, and the 

 story of the evolution of civilization begins to be 

 beautifully intelligible. 



The height of the ancient Cretan civilization is 

 later than that of the Egyptian or Babylonian, but 

 there is now no doubt that it was an original develop- 

 ment, giving as much to Egypt as it received from 

 that country. We know also that this Cretan empire 

 spread its civilization over a region almost as large as 

 that of Babylonia and Egypt. It had a great fleet on 

 the Mediterranean. It founded cities (Troy, etc.) in 

 Asia Minor and in Greece, and quite recently traces 

 of its influence have been found in Sicily. We shall 

 see presently that it was an advanced civilization, of 

 a most interesting type, more than four thousand 

 years ago. 



In order to get the clue to this strange fact of 

 civilization developing independently in three regions, 



