DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0065
CHAPTER III
THE BEGINNINGS OF MINOAN CIVILISATION
Tins mass of discoveries on Cretan sites has not only
made the Candia Museum one of the most important in
the world, but has also immensely complicated the archaeo-
logical situation. The position created by Mr. Evans's
iirst excavations at Knossos was simple and comfortable.
The word Mycenaean was still used of everything which
came between the Neolithic age and the beginnings of
classical Greece. Within this vast period an evolution
had, of course, been recognised, and Pre- and Sub-
Mycenaean were terms commonly in use. A glance, how-
ever, at a book such as the first volume of Professor
Ridgeway's Early Age of Greece, published in 1901, will
show how vague such distinctions were, and to what a
large extent Mycenaean civilisation was still regarded as
an indivisible whole. In this civilisation Crete was found
without surprise to have played the leading part that
tradition had always claimed for it. The closest deter-
mination of date which we seemed likely to secure was
that the mature bloom of the art of Knossos was an
earlier stage than that represented in the lower town
of Mycenae, and practically contemporary with that of
the fourth Shaft grave on its acropolis. The simplicity
and the danger of such " thinking in millenniums " is
well illustrated by Professor Ridgeway's book itself.
The impression left on the reader is that between the
Neolithic age and the Geometric there was just time
enough for the Pelasgians to be overthrown by the
40
THE BEGINNINGS OF MINOAN CIVILISATION
Tins mass of discoveries on Cretan sites has not only
made the Candia Museum one of the most important in
the world, but has also immensely complicated the archaeo-
logical situation. The position created by Mr. Evans's
iirst excavations at Knossos was simple and comfortable.
The word Mycenaean was still used of everything which
came between the Neolithic age and the beginnings of
classical Greece. Within this vast period an evolution
had, of course, been recognised, and Pre- and Sub-
Mycenaean were terms commonly in use. A glance, how-
ever, at a book such as the first volume of Professor
Ridgeway's Early Age of Greece, published in 1901, will
show how vague such distinctions were, and to what a
large extent Mycenaean civilisation was still regarded as
an indivisible whole. In this civilisation Crete was found
without surprise to have played the leading part that
tradition had always claimed for it. The closest deter-
mination of date which we seemed likely to secure was
that the mature bloom of the art of Knossos was an
earlier stage than that represented in the lower town
of Mycenae, and practically contemporary with that of
the fourth Shaft grave on its acropolis. The simplicity
and the danger of such " thinking in millenniums " is
well illustrated by Professor Ridgeway's book itself.
The impression left on the reader is that between the
Neolithic age and the Geometric there was just time
enough for the Pelasgians to be overthrown by the
40