DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1066#0050
Ill
INDUSTRIES AND COMMERCE
IN direct contrast to such peoples as the
Assyrians, whose story is one long series of
wars and plundering expeditions, the ancient
Cretans, unlike their modern representatives, were
a peaceful people, and made their conquests in
arts, industries, and commerce.
Among industries evidenced by recent excava-
tions in Crete, agriculture has left us no tools ex-
cept, perhaps, bronze sickles. Minoans did with
hand labour and perishable implements what we
accomplish by machines. It is still possible on the
mountain-sides, where the crop is scanty, to see
men and women plucking the corn. But of farm-
ing and the yet older pursuit of grazing the earliest
Cretan writing bears ample witness. Cattle, sheep,
goats and pigs, the plough, the barred fence, milk
vessels suspended from yokes, are among the
oldest picture signs. Every site of a town has
yielded stone mortars and querns for grinding
corn; and the actual peas and barley grains—
the housewife's store for the morrow that never
came—have been discovered at the bottoms of
many buried jars. That the fig-tree was known
and cherished is proved by frequent representa-
tions, but the vine nowhere appears unless in one
doubtful, instance on a faience plaque. Olive oil
36
INDUSTRIES AND COMMERCE
IN direct contrast to such peoples as the
Assyrians, whose story is one long series of
wars and plundering expeditions, the ancient
Cretans, unlike their modern representatives, were
a peaceful people, and made their conquests in
arts, industries, and commerce.
Among industries evidenced by recent excava-
tions in Crete, agriculture has left us no tools ex-
cept, perhaps, bronze sickles. Minoans did with
hand labour and perishable implements what we
accomplish by machines. It is still possible on the
mountain-sides, where the crop is scanty, to see
men and women plucking the corn. But of farm-
ing and the yet older pursuit of grazing the earliest
Cretan writing bears ample witness. Cattle, sheep,
goats and pigs, the plough, the barred fence, milk
vessels suspended from yokes, are among the
oldest picture signs. Every site of a town has
yielded stone mortars and querns for grinding
corn; and the actual peas and barley grains—
the housewife's store for the morrow that never
came—have been discovered at the bottoms of
many buried jars. That the fig-tree was known
and cherished is proved by frequent representa-
tions, but the vine nowhere appears unless in one
doubtful, instance on a faience plaque. Olive oil
36