DISCOVERY 



35 



were colonists from Crete, made a practice of calling 

 children by the mother's, not the father's, name.* If 

 this was the case also in Minoan Crete itself, it may 

 afford a possible explanation of the freedom enjoyed 

 by Cretan women ; for the practice of naming children 

 after their mother instead of after their father is 

 connected with states of society which have not yet 

 evolved any definite ideas of marriage, and in which, 

 as Herbert Spencer says, " The connection between 

 mother and child is always certain, whereas the con- 

 nection between father and child would sometimes be 

 only inferable." 



XI 



Towards the end of the Minoan Age Cretan culture 

 began to spread all over the .-Egean, and extended to 

 the mainland. Cretan vases are found as far north 

 as Boeotia, and the many Cretan relics discovered in 

 Mycenaean tombs were not all war-souvenirs ; some 

 of them, belonging to times before the fall of Knossos, 

 were the peaceful product of Cretan workmen who 

 had been induced by the Lords of Mycena; to emigrate. 



The men from the North who finally overthrew what 

 we call the Minoan civilisation, became to some 

 extent the repositories of Cretan tradition. They 

 carried on a less splendid phase of Cretan civilisation, 

 a phase which was distinguished by the name " My- 

 cenaean." They had come to Greece from lands still 

 further north, whence they had themselves been 

 driven to seek new homes. They came down in 

 successive waves of invasion, the men who formed 

 the first wave being known as the " Achaeans," the 

 "yellow-haired Achaeans" of Homer. It was they — 

 so at least some authorities hold — who sacked Knossos, 

 and who afterwards, during the thirteenth and 

 twelfth centuries B.C., wandering about in search of 

 adventure, became the terror of the whole iEgean. 

 An Egj-ptian inscription of those times says : " The 

 Isles were restless; disturbed among themselves." 



Egypt herself felt the effect of the disturbances. 

 From the " isles in the midst of the Great Green Sea," 

 there no longer came the peaceful Minoans to pay 

 their friendly tribute to Egypt's King; instead there 

 came the unpeaceful Achaeans, on an unpeaceful 

 mission. Two raids were made — if we may trust the 

 students of Egyptian records ^ — one about 1230 B.C., 

 another about 1200 B.C. Not long after we find the 

 Achaeans, in Agamemnon's famous expedition, fighting 

 against the Trojans in Asia Minor ; and they took 

 the city at last in 1184 B.C., if we accept the date 

 supported by the weight of Greek tradition. It is 



' Herodotus, i. 73. 



2 See H. R. Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, p 70 

 IMethuen, 1913). Mr. Hall gives the more definite date of 

 c. 1196 for the second invasion. 



their deeds in the latter war that have been sung by 

 Homer. Two generations after the Trojan War, 

 shortly before iioo B.C., Greece was overrun by the 

 Dorians, who formed the second great wave of 

 Northern invaders. After that came the Dark Age, 

 out of which about 800 B.C. emerged classical Greece. 

 Classical Greece was the fusion of the two main 

 elements of prehistoric times, the artistic Mediter- 

 ranean people on the one hand, and the robust ' 

 Northern invaders on the other. Just as the fusion 

 was probably consummated in the Dark Age, so the 

 first poet of classical Greece, Homer, whether one 

 person or the embodiment of many, heralded their 

 new life in song which seemed to echo from that 

 Dark Age, but of which the substance was probably 

 far less legendary than historical. Whether the 

 traditions of the Minoan Age in Crete were kept alive 

 through the Dark Age in Ionia, whither it is thought 

 that they were carried by Achjean refugees at the 

 time of the Dorian invasion, which extended to Crete, 

 or whether they remained dormant in Crete itself, 

 and in the Mycenaean centres of the mainland of 

 Greece, it is in either case certain that they were 

 abundantly preserved, for their traces are plainly to be 

 seen throughout Greek civilisation. And from the 

 Greek writers they descended as a treasured heritage 

 to the poets of Rome, and so to the art and literature 

 of Europe. 



The Structure of the 

 Universe 



By the Rev. Hector Macpherson, M.A., 

 F.R.A.S., F.R.S.E. 



{Continued from January No., p. 8) 



II. Twenty Years of Progress 



So far as astronomical science is concerned, the twen- 

 tieth century bids fair to be the " wonderful century." 

 In no other period of equal length as the two decades 

 since 1900 has the rate of progress been so rapid. 

 All branches have gone forward, in greater or less 

 degree ; but in none of the sub-sciences into which 

 astronomy is now divided has so much been accom- 

 plished as in the department relating to the structure 

 of the stellar universe. There have been various 

 reasons for this rapid advance. The present generation 

 has come into a great heritage — the accumulated 



