178 



DISCOVERY 



and through the Homeric walls without seeing them. 

 From Troy he went to Mycenae and Tiryns on the 

 Greek mainland, and the sum of his achievement was 

 the definite disclosure of the " Myccn:ean " civilisation, 

 which, as we now know, flourished from about 1400 B.C. 

 to iioo B.C. He thereby justified his faith in the 

 historic background to the Homeric poems. One can 

 readily imagine the excitement which accompanied 

 such discovery ; as when Schliemann sent a telegram 

 to the King of the Hellenes announcing that he had 

 found, the tomb of Agamemnon at Mycenae. One 

 almost wishes it had been literally true, as Schliemann 

 at the time thought it was. In any case, he laid the 

 foundations for the whole structure of modem pre- 

 historic research. 



Prominent in that work of research has been the 

 opening up of Crete. The discoveries of Sir Arthur 

 Evans and other excavators — British, American, 

 Italian — have proved that the Mycenxan culture 

 revealed by Schliemann was itself only a late and even 

 decadent phase of a great Mediterranean civilisation 

 which centred round Crete. 



II 



The primitive ^Egean people played a great part in 

 the activities of the Near East. This part lasted 

 through several thousand years, and the scene of its 

 action embraced every shore of the Eastern Mediter- 

 ranean. Crete was a land, as Homer ' says, " in the 

 midst of the wine-dark ocean, fair and rich, with the 

 waters all around." It was the natural centre towards 

 which the mainlands of Greece, Asia Minor, and Egj'pt 

 converged, especially as its irregular coast afforded 

 good hai hours for the small ships of that remote time. 



The first settlement of man in Crete took place at 

 Knossos, in the later or " Neolithic " Stone Age. This 

 fact is established by the nature of the relics found 

 at the lowest level in the excavations, the level which 

 represents the earliest period in time. Phaestos, on 

 the south side of the island, received its first inhabitants 

 at a later date — a fact for which we are indebted to 

 the pottery that has been discovered there. The 

 establishment of this fact is indeed a typical instance 

 of the great value of pottery as archaeological evidence. 

 The earliest ware found at Knossos is unornamented ; 

 the next is improved by " incised lines " — that is, 

 lines cut in the clay with a pointed instrument and 

 often filled in, for greater effect, with a white substance. 

 At Phaestos, on the other hand, the pottery found 

 lowest down is already in this second stage in its 

 artistic evolution, the inference being that the men 

 who settled there took the art with them at the point 

 10 which it had been developed by the Knossians. 



After the " Stone " Age came the " Bronze " Age. 

 • Odyssey, xi.\, 172. 



Men realised that not stone, but a mixture of copper 

 and tin, provided the best material for instruments. 

 A picturesque touch is added to this discovery by an 

 Italian archaeologist, Angelo Mosso, who in The Dawn 

 of Civilisation gives reason for believing that, even 

 at so remote a period, the tin was brought to Crete 

 from Cornwall. He goes so far as to point out the 

 actual caravan route by which the tin was transported ! 

 It was during this Bronze Age, which lasted about 2,000 

 years, that Cretan ci%'ilisation reached its highest level. 

 Sir Arthur Evans has given to it the picturesque name 

 " Minoan," and has divided it into three stages — 

 Early, Middle, Late — each Nsith three subdivisions. 

 Early Minoan I (E.M. I) begins about 2800 B.C., Late 

 Minoan III (L.M. Ill) ends about 1000 B.C.'' These 

 nine periods are a happy play upon " the nine seasons " 

 during which Homer ' speaks of King Minos as reigning 

 in Knossos : " And in Crete is Knossos, a great city, 

 and in it Minos ruled for nine seasons, the bosom friend 

 of mighty Zeus." The term " Minoan " should be 

 carefully distinguished from " Mycenaean." After 

 Schliemann 's discoveries at Mycenae and Tiryns, the 

 term " Mycenaean " was used in a general sense, to 

 cover the whole prehistoric ..Egean civilisation ; but 

 now that Crete has put MycenjE into its right per- 

 spective, the term " Minoan " is used to indicate the 

 earlier and greater phase, while " Mycenaean " merely 

 covers the latest phase ; the whole being designated 

 " /Egean " or "Mediterranean." There is, to com- 

 plete the nomenclature, a further epithet, " Cycladic," 

 which is sometimes substituted for " Minoan " when one 

 speaks e.xclusively of the island sites outside of Crete. 



With the fall of Knossos, which took place shortly 

 before 1400 b.c. — I again adopt Dr. Burrows's dating 

 — the centre of influence in the .-Egean passed over 

 from Crete to the mainland of Greece, and the 

 true " Mycenaean " period started. Thereafter 

 followed the Dark Ages, which themselves immediately 

 preceded " historical " Greece. Recorded Greek his- 

 tory begins about Soo B.C. 



(To be continued next month) 



Dr. R. R. Marett's important book. Psychology and 

 Folk-lore, discusses the methods of the study of man, 

 and should be of great interest both to psychologists 

 and students of folk-lore, while it will assist in inter- 

 preting history as the expression of our common human 

 nature. The book is published by Messrs. Mcthucn at 

 7s. 6i/. net. 



The Lure of the Map is the title of a series of essays 

 on the literature of travel, the relation of travel and 

 romance, and the fascination of the map. The book is 

 byW. P. James, and Messrs. Methuen arc the pubUshens. 



> See The Discoveries in Crete, by Dr. Ronald M. Burrows, 

 p, 98. ' Odyssey, \ix, 179- 



