StPTEMBER 15, I9O4J 



NA TURE 



481 



THK OLDER CIVILISATION OF GREECE: 

 A PREHISTORIC SEA-POWER.' 



"D EADERS of the articles on the " Older Civil- 

 -'■'- isation of Greece " which have from time to time 

 appeared in the columns of Nature will remember 

 that the archaolog-ical labours of .Mr. .\rthur J. Evans, 

 K.R.S., Prof. Ludovico Halbherr, .Mr. D. G. Hogarth, 

 and .Mr. R. C. Bosanquet (not to mention their 

 assistants, of whom Dr. Duncan Mackenzie and Prof. 

 I.uigi Pernier are the most distinguished) in the island 

 of Crete have succeeded in disinterring for modern 

 science the remains of an ancient civilisation as highly 

 developed as the contemporary cultures of Egypt and 

 B.ibylonia, and possibly as old ; in any case a thousand 

 years older than the civilisation of Greece which we 

 have learnt to know at our schools and academies — 

 the Greek civilisation of the schoolmasters and the 

 sculptors. Of this prehistoric civilisation (for pre- 

 historic it still remains, since we cannot vet read its 

 written records) the first remains were found bv the 

 famous Schliemann at 

 Mycenae and Tiryns, hence 

 the use of the term 

 " Mycenaan " to describe 

 it. The excavations in 

 Grete have of late years 

 very considerably modified 

 our conceptions of its 

 character ; we see now 

 that the chief seat of its 

 development was not the 

 continent of Greece, but 

 the great island of Crete, 

 and that the two most 

 important remains of its 

 Cretan phase were the 

 great stone palaces of 

 Knossos and Phaistos, 

 which have been excavated 

 by Dr. Evans and Prof. 

 Halbherr respectivelv. 



Now it is evident that 

 the whole Mycenaean civil- 

 isation did not pass away 

 without leaving some 

 trace of its greatness and 

 power upon the minds of 

 the semi-barbarous tribes 

 from the north who over- 

 threw it, and afterwards 

 built up the renascent Fig. i.— ahiiri= ui ,haKc-gujacbi wui 

 ■■ classical " culture of 

 Greece upon its ruins, just 



as the English built up the modern renascent Roman 

 civilisation of England on the ruins of the Romano- 

 British culture which they destroyed. Just as 

 traditions of the greatness of the Romans re- 

 mained in the minds of the English, so, but 

 to a much greater extent, traditions of their 

 " Pelasgian " forerunners remained in the ininds of 

 the later Greeks and combined with their own 

 •' .Aryan " tales to form the legendary history of early 

 Greece. A considerable proportion of the Greek 

 legends — the Wars of Troy and of the Seven against 

 Thebes, the stories of the .Atridae and of the Minyae, 

 &c. — are undoubtedly altered reminiscences of the pre- 

 historic period of high civilisation to which the re- 

 mains discovered at Mycenae, at Orchomenos, at 

 Knossos, and at Phaistos belong. .Among these 



' "The Annual of the British School at Athens," Xo. ix.. 1903-4. Pp. 

 x + 422, and Plates. (London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd.) Price i7i. net. 



■• Excavations at Phylakcpi in Melos. " Hellenic Society Supplementary 

 Paper, No. 4. Pp. xv + .-So, and Plates. (London: iMacmillan and Co., 

 Ltd.) Price 30^. net. 



NO. 1820, VOL. 70] 



legends, which certainly contain a substratum of 

 historical truth, those of the Thalassocracy of the 

 Cretans under the sway of the great and wise Minos 

 are the most important. It is .certain that the palace 

 discovered by Mr. Evans at Knossos is the veritable 

 Labyrinth of the Minotaur; one may believe in the 

 Labyrinth without being accused of also believing in 

 the Minotaur, and if one believes in the Labyrinth one 

 also believes in the magnificence and power of its 

 builders, whether their names be Minos and Daedalus 

 or not. Probably their names were not really in the 

 least like Minos or Dsedalus, but it is evident that 

 these appellations signify, the one the powerful 

 prehistoric dynasty of 'Knossos, the other the 

 skilled craftsmen who made for them the beautiful 

 works of art which we can admire in the Museum of 

 Candia, and which are photographically reproduced 

 in the pages of the " .Annual of the British School at 

 .Athens." 



The most characteristic feature of the Knossian or 

 " Minoan " power in legend is the fact that it was a 



sh Schuol at Athens.") 



sea-power. This is always insisted upon. Cretans 

 raid the .Attic coast, found colonies in Sicih* and 

 at Miletus, and so on. A power of the calibre of that 

 which is revealed to us by the Cretan excavations can 

 never have confined its operations to the isle of Crete 

 alone. .And the evidence of over-sea connections, with 

 Egypt and with the continent of Greece, is so strong 

 that there can be little doubt that the legends are right, 

 and that Minoan Crete held a thalassocracy, was a 

 great sea-power. Sea-power means the foundation of 

 colonies, and apparently Minoan Crete was no excep- 

 tion to this rule. It may be that the coast settlement 

 of PaWikastro, beyond Siti'a at the extreme eastern 

 end of the island, was a Minoan colony established 

 on the non-Minoan, possibly hostile, shore of the 

 Eteokretans, though it is only fair to say that Mr. 

 Bosanquet is not in favour of the theory of the pre- 

 dominantly non-Minoan character of the Siti'a country 

 in Minoan days. .At Phvlakopi, in the island of 

 Melos, the nearest of the Cyclades to Crete, has been 



