26 THE WONDERS OP ANCIENT CRETE 



since the Ice Age, and secondly that Crete was the 

 centre of a Neolithic population about 10,000 b.c. 

 The experts tell us that the settlers " probably came 

 from Africa," but they do not take account of the 

 geological catastrophe to which I have referred. It 

 is more reasonable to suppose that the survivors from 

 the foundering lands settled on the higher land which 

 is now Crete. There, from about 10,000 to 3,000 b.c, 

 they lived the life of the New Stone Age which we 

 have described. About 3,000 b.c. they began to use 

 metal, 1 and within a century or two they passed into 

 the phase which scholars definitely call civilization. 



The evolution of each early civilization is so 

 gradual that nothing like a precise date can be given. 

 There is merely a slow improvement of the culture 

 until it reaches a stage that we choose to call civilized. 

 Artistic pottery, for instance, is one of the most 

 common tests ; and the use of metal and the estab- 

 lishment of a settled kingdom are other marks on 

 which archaeologists fasten. But it is neither 

 necessary nor possible here to go over the successive 

 phases of each civilization. For Crete the reader 

 may consult the works of Hall and Hawes and Baikie. 

 Here we may confine ourselves to the more interest- 

 ing features of the Cretan civilization once it was 

 fully developed. 



Some of those features proved so picturesque and 

 surprising that they are already fairly well known to 

 the general public. Our knowledge is very largely 

 derived from the ruins of the palace of ftie Cretan 

 kings at Knossos. It was destroyed and rebuilt more 



1 The dates are still uncertain, and, as usual, I give moderate 

 figures. Some would say 4,000 B.C. In any case, the rise of the 

 Cretan civilization coincides with the rise of the first kings of Egypt. 



