18 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



Members of three foreign nations have worked in friendly rivalry 

 to learn the buried history of Crete . . . and Cretan soil may be 

 said to have been found to teem with pre-Hellenic antiquities. The 

 hopes of archaeologists have been abundantly justified. We have 

 followed them and arrived at the home of the first European civili- 

 zation. Hawes. Crete, the Forerunner of Greece. 



Even at this exceedingly early stage of human progress, the va- 

 rious branches of industry had become fairly separated and specialized, 

 more so, perhaps, than in the Homeric period, and a considerable 

 variety of tools was employed in the various crafts. The carpenter 

 was evidently a highly skilled craftsman, and the tools which have 

 survived show the variety of work which he undertook. At Knossos 

 a carefully hewn tomb held, along with the body of the dead artificer, 

 specimens of the tools of his trade a bronze saw, adze, and chisel. 

 ' A whole carpenter's kit lay concealed in a cranny of a Gournia house 

 left behind in the owner's hurried flight when the town was attacked 

 and burned. He used saws long and short, heavy chisels for stone 

 and light for wood, awls, nails, files, and axes much battered by use ; 

 and what is very important to note, they resemble in shape the tools 

 of to-day so closely that they furnish one of the strongest links 

 between the first great civilization of Europe and our own.' Such 

 tools were, of course, of bronze. Probably the chief industry of the 

 island was the manufacture and export of olive oil. The palace at 

 Knossos has its Room of the Olive Press, and its conduit for convey- 

 ing the product of the press to the place where it was to be stored for 

 use ; and probably many of the great jars now in the magazines were 

 used for the storage of this indispensable article. Baikie. Sea 

 Kings of Crete. 



THE IRON AGE. THE GREEKS OR HELLENES. Soon after the 

 arrival of the Iron Age, and probably not far from 1200-1000 B.C., 

 a new people became prominent on the shores of the ^Egean. 

 These were the Greeks or, as they called themselves, Hellenes, 

 inhabitants of Greece or Hellas. Their precise origin is unknown, 

 but they were undoubtedly of Indo-European stock and probably 

 came, in part at least, from the north. It has been conjectured 

 that their conquest of the existing inhabitants was facilitated by, 

 if not due to, their possession of weapons of iron. Of the earlier 



