DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0218
ig2 NEOLITHIC POTTERY OF SOUTH RUSSIA
If, however, we lay stress on the resemblance of
Petreny to the beginnings of the finer Minoan ware,1
we must shift our ground, and place the migration late,
when the Bronze Age of the /Egean was well advanced.
Our Troy, Melos, and Lengyel analogies will have to
be explained away. How is it, too, that a people who
were, ex hypothcsi, in a Neolithic state of culture, con-
quered the bronze weapons of the ^Egean ? It is against
analogy that art should conquer weapons. The one
wave of Indo-European conquest that we are certain of,
was brought about by the iron weapons of an inartistic
people. Are we to imagine that the new culture was
welcomed without conquest, as England absorbed the
industries of the Flemings or the Huguenots ? Or
does Troy mark the point where our South Russians
learnt their war—and forgot for the time their art ?
It is strange that the half-way houses that mark their
progress southward are on a lower level of artistic
development than the point from which they started,
as well as from the point which they finally reach.
They must have left the inartistic members of their
population in their settlement all down either coast,
and have kept the artists together till they reached
Crete !
An ingenious way out of this dilemma is to suppose
that the Indo-Europeans invaded the South before their
art had reached its full development in its original
1 See c.?. the fine designs of Von Stern, Plate IX. 2 and 3. It
is the Middle Minoan II. Kamares vases that remind Von Stei n
(p. 86) of Petreny, not the ruder ware. Schmidt, on the other
hand, when in Z. f. Ethnol. 1904, pp. 653-5, nc figures the " Fruit-
stand " vase of Knossos as fig. 28 along with figs. 26, 29, from
Hungary and fig. 27 from the First City of Troy, docs not realise
that Kamares ware is somewhat distinct in date from Neolithic.
The vase is figured in J.H.S. xxi. fig. 15, p. 88, and classed as
Middle Minoan II. by Mackenzie, ibid. xxvi. p. 250. At Knossos
the type does not appear earlier than Middle Minoan I. See
ibid. Plate XI. No. 12.
If, however, we lay stress on the resemblance of
Petreny to the beginnings of the finer Minoan ware,1
we must shift our ground, and place the migration late,
when the Bronze Age of the /Egean was well advanced.
Our Troy, Melos, and Lengyel analogies will have to
be explained away. How is it, too, that a people who
were, ex hypothcsi, in a Neolithic state of culture, con-
quered the bronze weapons of the ^Egean ? It is against
analogy that art should conquer weapons. The one
wave of Indo-European conquest that we are certain of,
was brought about by the iron weapons of an inartistic
people. Are we to imagine that the new culture was
welcomed without conquest, as England absorbed the
industries of the Flemings or the Huguenots ? Or
does Troy mark the point where our South Russians
learnt their war—and forgot for the time their art ?
It is strange that the half-way houses that mark their
progress southward are on a lower level of artistic
development than the point from which they started,
as well as from the point which they finally reach.
They must have left the inartistic members of their
population in their settlement all down either coast,
and have kept the artists together till they reached
Crete !
An ingenious way out of this dilemma is to suppose
that the Indo-Europeans invaded the South before their
art had reached its full development in its original
1 See c.?. the fine designs of Von Stern, Plate IX. 2 and 3. It
is the Middle Minoan II. Kamares vases that remind Von Stei n
(p. 86) of Petreny, not the ruder ware. Schmidt, on the other
hand, when in Z. f. Ethnol. 1904, pp. 653-5, nc figures the " Fruit-
stand " vase of Knossos as fig. 28 along with figs. 26, 29, from
Hungary and fig. 27 from the First City of Troy, docs not realise
that Kamares ware is somewhat distinct in date from Neolithic.
The vase is figured in J.H.S. xxi. fig. 15, p. 88, and classed as
Middle Minoan II. by Mackenzie, ibid. xxvi. p. 250. At Knossos
the type does not appear earlier than Middle Minoan I. See
ibid. Plate XI. No. 12.