A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



Coupled with this disconcerting discovery are the 

 revelations brought to light by the excavations at the 

 sites of Knossos and other long-buried cities of the 

 island of Crete. 2 These excavations, which are still in 

 progress, show that the art of writing was known and 

 practised independently in Crete before that cataclys- 

 mic overthrow of the early Greek civilization which 

 archaeologists are accustomed to ascribe to the hypo- 

 thetical invasion of the Dorians. The significance of 

 this is that the art of writing was known in Europe 

 long before the advent of the mythical Kadmus. But 

 since the early Cretan scripts are not to be identified 

 with the scripts used in Greece in historical times, 

 whereas the latter are undoubtedly of lineal descent 

 from the Phoenician alphabet, the validity of the 

 Kadmus legend, in a modified form, must still be 

 admitted. 



As has just been suggested, the new knowledge, 

 particularly that which related to the great antiquity 

 of characters similar to the Phoenician alphabetical 

 signs, is somewhat disconcerting. Its general trend, 

 however, is quite in the same direction with most of the 

 new archaeological knowledge of recent decades that 

 is to say, it tends to emphasize the idea that human 

 civilization in most of its important elaborations is 

 vastly older than has hitherto been supposed. It 

 may be added, however, that no definite clews are as 

 yet available that enable us to fix even an approxi- 

 mate date for the origin of the Phoenician alphabet. 

 The signs, to which reference has been made, may 

 well have been in existence for thousands of years, 

 utilized merely as property marks, symbols for count- 



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