DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0221
MEDITERRANEAN RACE THEORY 195
the blood of the race, and was independent of material
progress. This accounts for the fact that the civilisation
of South Russia fell an early victim to its Northern
neighbours. It disappears at the end of the Neolithic
Age, and leaves no traces behind it.1 It also explains
why its pottery is, in fact, neither the parent nor the
child of that of Crete, but shows points of resemblance
and difference with more than one stage of Minoan art.8
It is an independent development, in which an artistic
people who were out of the reach of metal spent their
whole creative powers.3 It is possible that it worked
1 Von Stern, p. 87. As suggested above, this may have been
after the Bronze Age had long begun in the ^Egean ; but it was
not necessarily so, if it was an independent development.
2 The finest spiral designs of Petreny have no analogy so
startling as the " late local pottery of the Mycenaean period "
in Melos. Cp. Von Stern, Plate IX. 3, with Phylakopi, Plate
XXVI. 1. The technique, however, is in the latter case quite
different, the spiral being in the light yellow ground colour of the
clay slip, while the background is painted in in black. See Edgar,
ibid. p. 132.
3 Further researches into the Neolithic Age of Asia Minor and
Central Asia may throw light on certain aspects of the art of
South Russia. As Sayce remarks (A.C.I, p. 39), the earlier
excavations in Mesopotamia took no notice of pottery. For
the Neolithic ware of Susa and Elam, see ibid. pp. 47-51. Chantre's
account of his discoveries in Cappadocia (M.C. 1898) is confused,
and it is difficult to estimate how early some of his pottery is.
Hall, O.C.G. pp. 314-9, makes the same remark about his clay
tablets. A valuable paper by J. L. Myres (J.A.I, xxxiii. pp.
367-400) on the early pot fabrics of Asia Minor suggests how
much we should be indebted to its author were he to revise
it in view of the new evidence ; e.g. in view of the mid-European
finds, he could hardly now maintain, as on p. 388, that the
spiral is the one feature of the Volo finds that suggests " ^Egean
tradition." For an account of the Pumpelly expedition and
its discovery of a late Neolithic and Early Bronze culture at
Asskhabad in Turkestan, see Schmidt in Z. f. Ethnol. 1906, pp.
385-90. In the third stratum (Bronze Age) there are three-
sided engraved stones, resembling in shape, though not in design,
Cretan seal stones of the " XHth Dynasty Middle Minoan II."
type. For these, see above, Chapter V.
the blood of the race, and was independent of material
progress. This accounts for the fact that the civilisation
of South Russia fell an early victim to its Northern
neighbours. It disappears at the end of the Neolithic
Age, and leaves no traces behind it.1 It also explains
why its pottery is, in fact, neither the parent nor the
child of that of Crete, but shows points of resemblance
and difference with more than one stage of Minoan art.8
It is an independent development, in which an artistic
people who were out of the reach of metal spent their
whole creative powers.3 It is possible that it worked
1 Von Stern, p. 87. As suggested above, this may have been
after the Bronze Age had long begun in the ^Egean ; but it was
not necessarily so, if it was an independent development.
2 The finest spiral designs of Petreny have no analogy so
startling as the " late local pottery of the Mycenaean period "
in Melos. Cp. Von Stern, Plate IX. 3, with Phylakopi, Plate
XXVI. 1. The technique, however, is in the latter case quite
different, the spiral being in the light yellow ground colour of the
clay slip, while the background is painted in in black. See Edgar,
ibid. p. 132.
3 Further researches into the Neolithic Age of Asia Minor and
Central Asia may throw light on certain aspects of the art of
South Russia. As Sayce remarks (A.C.I, p. 39), the earlier
excavations in Mesopotamia took no notice of pottery. For
the Neolithic ware of Susa and Elam, see ibid. pp. 47-51. Chantre's
account of his discoveries in Cappadocia (M.C. 1898) is confused,
and it is difficult to estimate how early some of his pottery is.
Hall, O.C.G. pp. 314-9, makes the same remark about his clay
tablets. A valuable paper by J. L. Myres (J.A.I, xxxiii. pp.
367-400) on the early pot fabrics of Asia Minor suggests how
much we should be indebted to its author were he to revise
it in view of the new evidence ; e.g. in view of the mid-European
finds, he could hardly now maintain, as on p. 388, that the
spiral is the one feature of the Volo finds that suggests " ^Egean
tradition." For an account of the Pumpelly expedition and
its discovery of a late Neolithic and Early Bronze culture at
Asskhabad in Turkestan, see Schmidt in Z. f. Ethnol. 1906, pp.
385-90. In the third stratum (Bronze Age) there are three-
sided engraved stones, resembling in shape, though not in design,
Cretan seal stones of the " XHth Dynasty Middle Minoan II."
type. For these, see above, Chapter V.