THE EXPANSION OF GREEK HISTORY 59 



thing earlier passing into early Greek culture, was left very doubtful. 

 A better knowledge of the Troy that Schliemann has excavated, and of 

 the remains of Cnosos in Crete, now in the act of being recovered 

 for us by the zeal and skill of Mr. Arthur Evans, have thrown much 

 light upon these incunabula of Greek history. The most interesting 

 point regarding the Trojan work recovered by Schliemann was its 

 great rudeness, when compared with that of Tiryns and Mykense. 

 For the Homeric poems had led us to believe that the culture of 

 Troy was fully as advanced as that of the invading Greeks. We owe 

 to Dr. Dorpfeld the further discovery that the Ilios of Schliemann 

 was not the sister in time of Mykense, but an older and deeper stratum, 

 and probably one thousand years earlier. The Mykenajan stratum, 

 through which Schliemann had pierced without recognizing it, was 

 found on a higher level all round Schliemann 's excavations, and was 

 found also in every way to correspond to the Greek work of the 

 Mykensean period. This proved that an enormously old culture had 

 taken possession of the shores of the Mediterranean, and that even 

 the Mykensean inherited from a long series of spiritual ancestors the 

 culture which seems to us so archaic. 1 The discoveries of Mr. Evans 

 not only tended (as usual) to corroborate the general features of the 

 Greek legends about King Minos, for example, his sea power, shown 

 by his unfortified palace near the seaboard, but proved that at this 

 early stage two hitherto unsuspected forms of writing, one in rude 

 pictures, the other in linear script, were in use in Crete, and doubt- 

 less therefore throughout the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean. 

 If these texts, scratched or impressed upon clay tablets, and certainly, 

 I think, not Greek, are ever deciphered, we shall know more clearly 

 the character and the provenance of the race that inhabited these 

 coasts and islands during the second millennium before the Christian 

 era. In my opinion that race will prove to be non-Hellenic, and even 

 non- Aryan, so that the boast of the Athenians and other Greeks that 

 they were an indigenous race will be once more refuted. 2 



But here the historian has recourse not to artistic remains, to pot- 

 tery, or to building, but to the evidence of the sister sciences of anthro- 

 pology, and still more of linguistics. The former science has yielded 

 but poor results. The variety of the physical types of skulls is such 

 that we can only infer a great mixture of races in Greece, without the 

 predominance of either Aryan or pre-Aryan types. Such at least is 



1 Under the lava of a prehistoric eruption from that great submarine and still 

 active volcano, of which Santorin and Therasia (the ancient Thera) form the 

 outward slopes, there were found thirty years ago the remains of what was aptly 

 called by the French a prehistoric Pompeii human bones within rude houses, 

 with remains of rude pottery, and even gold ornaments. 



2 But I must warn you that excellent authorities, Rohde, Reisch, think differently, 

 and think the Mykenaean builders the direct ancestors of the Homeric Greeks. On 

 the other hand Mr. Ridgeway, in his most remarkable unfinished book, The Early 

 Age of Greece, while he maintains that the earlier race differed materially from the 

 Acha?ans of Homer, he calls them Pelasgians, yet regards them as Aryan. 



