22 THE WONDERS OF ANCIENT CRETE 



land of which Crete is the largest surviving fragment. 

 The mystery of the three contemporary, yet widely 

 removed, ancient civilizations can hardly any longer 

 be regarded as a mystery. The civilizations of Asia 

 are much later than these, and we will in a subsequent 

 chapter consider their origin. 



We will take these three civilizations in succession, 

 but for the moment we may still consider the 

 Mediterranean race, which is at the root of all three, 

 as a whole, and see how it passes from the Old to 

 the New Stone Age. The general effect of the 

 concentration of the scattered Europeans in a 

 relatively small area would be the same as that of 

 the concentration of families in the caverns of 

 Europe. It would lead to social life : to the forma- 

 tion of clans by the clinging together of families, and 

 of tribes by the adhesion of clans. We must be very 

 careful in attempting to trace this social evolution 

 by the analogy of existing savages. They give us 

 hardly any safe and consistent clue, and I will not 

 attempt to go beyond this vague generalization. 

 Social groups, eventually tribes, were formed, and 

 chiefs were set up. So much we can infer from the 

 earliest remains. Beyond that we can only say 

 positively that woman had far more freedom and 

 personality (as we shall find in Crete, Egypt, and 

 Babylonia) than among the Aryan or the Semitic 

 tribes, and that there is some ground to suspect a 

 matriarchate. 



But in this slight sketch we must confine ourselves 

 to outline. In these " refugee regions," as we may call 

 them (North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean), 

 men worked their way out of the long Old Stone Age. 

 The broad secret of human progress is, as we shall 



