THE WONDERS OF ANCIENT CRETE 25 



was out on the Atlantic Ocean, and ever since his 

 time scholars have been puzzled about this " lost 

 Atlantis." We can say with confidence to-day that 

 there never was a civilization lost in the Atlantic, or 

 we should find some traces of its influence in pre- 

 historic Britain or France. But if any student cares 

 to study the various versions of the old legend care- 

 fully, he will find that the position of this " Atlantis " 

 was not at all certain, and we are free to suppose that 

 it is really a traditional reminiscence of the flooding 

 of the Neolithic region in the Eastern Mediterranean. 

 It was not yet civilized, but to some of the surround- 

 ing peoples, no doubt, its culture would seem very 

 high. 



We are strongly tempted to look here also for the 

 origin of the myth of a "deluge." But the flood- 

 story is mainly Babylonian. It was part of a romance 

 that was very popular among the Babylonians 

 thousands of years ago, and it was adopted into the 

 Hebrew scriptures like so many other Babylonian 

 legends. Floods were very familiar in ancient Baby- 

 lonia, and perhaps the most natural view is that 

 their story of a universal deluge, and of a specially 

 favoured man escaping in a boat with his family, is 

 merely a mythical dressing of some great flood that 

 actually occurred in their region. If, however, the 

 earliest founders of the Babylonian civilization were 

 part of the Mediterranean Race — which is disputed — 

 it is not impossible that their flood-story is, like the 

 Egyptian story which the Greeks converted into a 

 "lost Atlantis," a swollen tradition of the swamping 

 of a Neolithic people in the Mediterranean. 



At all events, we know two things : first, that there 

 has been a great foundering of land in that district 



