DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0189
CHAPTER X
CRETE AND THE NORTH
After the balancing of probabilities that has obscured
the last half of the preceding chapter, it is satisfactory
to remember that in its earlier pages we achieved one
solid result. Minoan civilisation as a whole was, we saw,
a native growth, rooted in the soil, and Oriental in the
sense that Crete itself was an integral part of the East.
Even this conclusion, however, may be seriously
modified by a question to which, up to the present, we
have made but a bare allusion.1 Are we to recognise
Indo-European elements in the main current of Minoan
civilisation ? Is it possible that it is of mixed origin,
and that early in its history it had its obligations to the
North, as well as to the South and East ?
Language, which has proved an inefficient guide even
for the end of the Bronze Age, will clearly fail us when
we try to push still further back. If it be held that the
Eteo-Cretan of Prajsos was an Indo-European tongue,
and that it was intrusive at the end of Late Minoan II.—
and of both hypotheses we can only say that they are not
improbable 1—we are no nearer to understanding the
language or race of the Minoans. If we could accept the
first hypothesis without the second, or neither the one
nor the other, we should be near to answering our ques-
tion ; but the data for deciding in either of these direc-
tions are quite inadequate. We must turn to physical
characteristics, and ask if we can tell anything from the
type of the people that we see represented on the monu-
1 Pp. 154-5. ' Pp* 151-8-
»63
CRETE AND THE NORTH
After the balancing of probabilities that has obscured
the last half of the preceding chapter, it is satisfactory
to remember that in its earlier pages we achieved one
solid result. Minoan civilisation as a whole was, we saw,
a native growth, rooted in the soil, and Oriental in the
sense that Crete itself was an integral part of the East.
Even this conclusion, however, may be seriously
modified by a question to which, up to the present, we
have made but a bare allusion.1 Are we to recognise
Indo-European elements in the main current of Minoan
civilisation ? Is it possible that it is of mixed origin,
and that early in its history it had its obligations to the
North, as well as to the South and East ?
Language, which has proved an inefficient guide even
for the end of the Bronze Age, will clearly fail us when
we try to push still further back. If it be held that the
Eteo-Cretan of Prajsos was an Indo-European tongue,
and that it was intrusive at the end of Late Minoan II.—
and of both hypotheses we can only say that they are not
improbable 1—we are no nearer to understanding the
language or race of the Minoans. If we could accept the
first hypothesis without the second, or neither the one
nor the other, we should be near to answering our ques-
tion ; but the data for deciding in either of these direc-
tions are quite inadequate. We must turn to physical
characteristics, and ask if we can tell anything from the
type of the people that we see represented on the monu-
1 Pp. 154-5. ' Pp* 151-8-
»63