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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1135 



merits that finally led up to the higher 

 forms of ancient civilization that arose on 

 the Nile and the Euphrates. In many di- 

 rections, we may believe, the flaming torch 

 had been carried on by the relay runners. 



But what, it may be asked, of Greece 

 itself, where human culture reached its 

 highest pinnacle in the ancient world and 

 to which we look as the principal source of 

 our own civilization? 



Till within recent years it seemed almost 

 a point of honor for classical scholars to re- 

 gard Hellenic civilization as a "Wonder- 

 Child, sprung, like Athena herself, fully 

 panoplied from the head of Zeus. The in- 

 debtedness to Oriental sources was either 

 regarded as comparatively late or confined 

 to such definite borrowings as the alphabet 

 or certain weights and measures. Egypt, 

 on the other hand, at least till Alexandrine 

 times, was looked on as something apart, 

 and it must be said that Egyptologists, on 

 their side, were only too anxious to pre- 

 serve their sanctum from profane contact. 



A truer perspective has now been opened 

 out. It has been made abundantly clear 

 that the rise of Hellenic civilization was 

 itself part of a wider economy and can be 

 no longer regarded as an isolated phenom- 

 enon. Indirectly, its relation to the greater 

 world and to the ancient centers to the 

 south and east has been now established by 

 its affiliation to the civilization of prehis- 

 toric Crete and by the revelation of the 

 extraordinarily high degree of proficiency 

 that was there attained in almost all de- 

 partments of human art and industry. 

 That Crete itself— the "Mid-Sea land," 

 a kind of halfway house between three con- 

 tinents — should have been the cradle of our 

 European civilization was, in fact, a logical 

 consequence of its geographical position. 

 An outlier of mainland Greece, almost op- 

 posite the mouths of the Nile, primitive 

 intercourse between Crete and the further 

 shores of the Libyan Sea was still further 



facilitated by favorable winds and cur- 

 rents. In the eastern direction, on the 

 other hand, island stepping-stones brought 

 it into easy communication with the coast 

 of Asia Minor, with which it was actually 

 connected in late geological times. 



But the extraneous influences that were 

 here operative from a remote period en- 

 countered on the island itself a primitive 

 indigenous culture that had grown up there 

 from immemorial time. In view of some 

 recent geological calculations, such as 

 those of Baron De Geer, who by counting 

 the number of layers of mud in Lake Ra- 

 gunda has reduced the ice-free period in 

 Sweden to 7,000 years, it will not be super- 

 fluous to emphasize the extreme antiquity 

 that seems to be indicated for even the 

 later Neolithic in Crete. The Hill of 

 Knossos, upon which the remains of the 

 brilliant Minoan civilization have found 

 their most striking revelation, itself re- 

 sembles in a large part of its composition a 

 great mound or tell — like those of Mesopo- 

 tamia or Egypt — formed of layer after 

 layer of human deposits. But the remains 

 of the whole of the later ages represented 

 down to the earliest Minoan period (which 

 itself goes back to a time contemporary 

 with the early Dynasties of Egypt — at a 

 moderate estimate to B.C. 3400) occupy 

 considerably less than a half — 19 feet, that 

 is, out of a total of over 45. Such calcula- 

 tions can have only a relative value, but, 

 even if we assume a more rapid accumula- 

 tion of debris for the Neolithic strata and 

 deduct a third from our calculation, they 

 would still occupy a space of over 3,400 

 years, giving a total antiquity of some 

 9,000 years from the present time. 11 No 

 Neolithic section in Europe can compare in 

 extent with that of Knossos, which itself 

 can be divided by the character of its con- 



ii For a fuller statement I must refer to my 

 forthcoming work, "The Nine Minoan Periods" 

 (Macmillans), Vol. I.: Neolithic Section. 



