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The Dawn of European Civilization By V. GORDON CHILDE 1923
Prometheus:
The Dawn of
European Civilization
By
V. GORDON CHILDE
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.461431
1923
By
V. GORDON CHILDE
D.Litt., D.Sc.
Professor of Prehistoric European Archeology, University of London
LONDON
ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL LTD
BROADWAY HOUSE: 6S-74 CARTER LANE. E.C.4
First Edition 1925
Second Edition 1927
CONTENTS
Chapter I. SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS .... i
II. The Orient and Crete ..... 15
III. Anatolia the Royal Road to the Aegean 35
IV. Maritime Civilization in the Cyclades . 48
V. From Village to City in Greece 57
VI. Farming Villages in the Balkans . 84
VII. Danubian Civilization ..... 105
VIII. The Peasants of the Black Earth 136
IX. Culture Transmission over the Eurasian Plain? 148
X. The Northern Cultures ..... 175
XI. Survivals of the Forest Culture . 203
XII. Megalith Builders and Beaker-folk 213
XIII. Farmers and Traders in Italy and Sicily 229
XIV. Island Civilizations in the Western Mediterranean 252
XV. The Iberian Peninsula . . . . 265
XVI. Western Culture in the Alpine Zone . 287
XVII. Megalith Builders in Atlantic Europe . 303
XVIII. The British Isles ...... 322
XIX. Retrospect: The Prehistory of European Society 341
Notes on Terminology ..... 353
Abbreviations ....... • 354
Books ........ • 358
FIG.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SWIDERIAN FLINT IMPLEMENTS, POLAND {after KoztOWSki)
Magdalenian harpoon from Cantabria and Azilian harpoons
AND PAINTED PEBBLES FROM ArI^GE .....
Geometric microliths and microgravers from Franconia
{after Gumpert) .........
Microliths from Muge, Portugal, and transverse arrow-
head SHAFTED FROM DENMARK ..............
"Lyngby axe” of reindeer antler, Holstein
Maglemosian types from Zealand ......
ERTEB0LLE POT, ANTLER AXES AND BONE COMBS, DENMARK .
Neolithic figurines from Crete and their relatives {after
Evans) ..........
Early Minoan III "teapots” and button seal {after Evans) .
The Minoan "Mother Goddess” and {left) Horns of Consecra-
tion, from a sealing {after Evans) .....
Minoan axes, axe-adzes and double axe, and seal impressions
{after Evans and Mon. Ant.) .......
(1) Early Minoan daggers, (2) Stone beads {after Evans) .
Middle Minoan I-II daggers {after Evans) ....
M.M.III RAPIERS (MyCENJE) AND L.M.I. HORNED HILT (CRETE)
{after Evans) . ........
(1) Late Mycenzean short sword, (2) Middle Minoan spear-
head ..........
Egyptian representations of Vapheio cups ....
Pottery from Thermi I-II(A) and III-IY(B) {after Lamb, BSA.,
XXX)....................................
"Megaron” palace, Troy II . ............
Pottery from Troy II .......
Knife and daggers and gold vessels, Troy II {Museum f.
Vorgeschichte, Berlin) ........
Battle-axe, gold-capped bead, and crystal pommel from
Treasure L, and stray axe-adze {Museum f. Vorgeschichte,
Berlin) ..........
Gold earring and pendant from Treasure A, pin from
Treasure D, bracelet from Treasure F, and knot-headed
pins {Museum f. Vorgeschichte, Berlin)
Tomb-group. Amorgos ......
Cycladic "frying-pan” and sherd showing boat .
Tombs on Syros and Eubcea ,
page
3
4
6
7
8
10
12
18
20
25
28
29
30
31
32
33
39
40
42
42
43
45
49
50
52
vii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
26. Slotted spear-head (showing method of mounting), halberd
AND TWEEZERS. AMORGOS ....... 53
27. Early Cycladic ornaments: Paros; Syros .... 54
28. Cycladic pottery: (i) Pelos; (2) Phylakopi I; (3) Phylakopi
II (L.C.).................................................55
29. Thessalian stone axes and adzes (after Tsountas) ... 59
30. Pottery of Sesklo style, white on red and red on white
(after Wace and Thompson) ....... 59
31. Neolithic figurines, Thessaly (after Wace and Thompson) . 61
32. Miniature altar or throne (after Wace and Thompson) . . 62
33. Plan of fortified village of Dimini (after Tsountas) . . 63
34. Dimini bowl and gold-ring pendant (after Tsountas) . . 64
35. Axe and battle-axes from H. Mamas (after Heurtley, BSA.,
XXIX).....................................................68
36. Early Helladic sauce-boat, askos, tankard, and jar . . 70
37. Early Macednic pot-forms (after Heurtley, B.S.A., XXVIII) . 71
38. Anchor Ornament, Kritsana................................... 71
39. Spear-head, knives, and dagger from M.H. graves in
Thessaly (after Tsountas) ....... 73
40. Minyan pottery from Thessaly, and imitations from Thermon,
JJtolia .......... 74
41. Matt-painted bowl and pithos from J£gina; and M.C. jugs
from Marseilles harbour and Phylakopi .... 75
42. Matt-painted jar, Lianokladhi III (after Wace and Thompson). 76
43. Terminal and pattern-bored spacer-bead from amber neck-
lace: Shaft Grave at Mycenze ...... 79
44. Mycenzean tholos tomb on Eubcea (after Papavasileiou) . . 81
45. Clay loom-weights and bone spatula of Kor6s culture . 86
46. Cruciform-footed bowl in fine Starcevo ware, and jar of
rusticated Koros style . . . . . . . 87
47. Bone combs and ring-pendant, Tordos, and ‘‘harpoon’’, Vinca 89
48. "Face urn” lid from Vinca (after Vassits) .... go
49. Mug, tripod bowl, and “altar” decorated by excision,
Banyata II ......... 95
50. Peg-footed vase from Denev ...... 97
51. Copper axe and adze from Gaborevo ..... 99
52. Gumelnija pottery: (i) Czernavoda; (2) Tel Metchkur;
(3-4) Tel Ratchev; (5-6) Kodja Berman .... 100
53. Painted clay head, Vin£a . . . . . . .101
54. Squatting figure, bone figurines and clay phallus, Bul-
garia ........... 102
55. Models of houses, Denev . . . . . . .102
56. Small Danubian I house from Saxony; the walls are marked
by a double row of posts (after Sangmeister) . . .107
viii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG.
57-
58.
59-
60.
61.
62.
63-
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
7°.
7i-
72.
73-
74.
75-
76.
77-
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85-
86.
87.
88.
PAGE
“Shoe-last celts” (after Seger) ...... 107
DANUBIAN I POTTERY . . . . . . . . 108
Clay block vase, Moravia . . . . . . .114
Copper trinkets and triangular axe, Jordanova (after Seger) 114
DANUBIAN II POTTERY, LENGYEL . . . . . . II5
Stroke-ornamented vases, Bohemia; Rossen vases, Central
Germany .......... 117
Copper battle-axes, Hungary . . . . . .120
Copper axe-adzes and axes, Hungary . . . . .121
Knobbed mace-head, Maros Decse . . . . .122
Bodrogkeresztur pyxis and milk-jug (after Tompa) . . 122
Pins and earrings from Unetician graves (after Schrdnil) . 129
Daggers from Unetician graves (after Schrdnil) . . . 131
Hoard of Sobochleby (after Schrdnil) . . . . .131
Bronze-hilted dagger (after Schrdnil) . . . . .131
Bulb, disc, trilobate, and crutch-headed pins from later
Unetician graves (after Schrdnil) ..... 133
Marschwitz and early Unetician pottery, Silesia and Bohemia
(after Stockf) ......... 134
Model hut from Popudnia . . . . . . .138
Potters’ oven and model, Ariu^d (after Laszlo) . . . 140
Tripolye types (after Passeh) .....................141
Stone sceptre-head, Fedele$eni, and clay stamp, Ariu^d . 143
Usatova types (after Passek) . ...................146
Copper battle-axe, Vozdvizhenskaya, copper beads, copper
spear-head, copper and bone hammer-pins . . . .151
Vases: (i) from Catacomb grave, Donetz; (2-3) from pit-graves,
Yatskovice, near Kiev; (4) from Yamno grave, Donetz;
(5) B FUNNEL BEAKER, DENMARK.....................I52
Transverse axe, axe-adze, knife, and gold and silver vases,
CARNELIAN BEAD AND FLINT ARROW-HEADS, FROM MAIKOP
barrow .......... 133
(1) Megalithic cist, Novosvobodnaya; (2) Catacomb grave,
Donetz .......... 153
Pottery, weapons, tools, and pins from tomb at Novosvo-
bodnaya .......... 155
Pottery and battle-axes from the Single Graves of Jutland
and Sweden (after Fv, 1922) . . . . . .161
Saxo-Thuringian corded ware .......................163
Thuringian faceted battle-axe and Silesian battle-axe . 164
Zlota pottery (after Kozlowski) . . . . . .166
Fatyanovo battle-axe and Finnish boat-axe . . . 169
Fatyanovo pottery of the Moscow, Yaroslav, and CuvaS groups i 70
ix
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
89. The Gali£ hoard . ........ 171
90. Northern flint axes arranged according to Montelius’
typology {by permission of Trustees of British Museum) . . 175
91. A-type funnel-beakers, amphora, “baking plate” {after Becker) 178
92. Tongued club-head, Denmark; polygonal battle-axe, Jordan-
ova; and flint axe of Eastern type . . . . .179
93. Pottery from Danish dysser ...... 181
94. Grave 28 at Jordanova {after Seger) . . . . .182
95. Danish Passage Grave pottery of phases B and C; battle-axe
AND ARROW-HEAD . . . . . . . . 184
96. Furniture of a grave at Zastow; and collared flask from
GRAVE AT NaLENCZOW . . . . . . . . 188
97. Kuyavish grave, Swierczyn {after Kozlowski) . 189
98. Walternienburg vases, Latdorf drum, and Baalburg jug . 193
99. Globular amphorae from Saxo-Thuringia and Podolia, and
BONE GIRDLE-CLASP FROM PODOLIA ..... I94
100. Flint daggers and Swedish cists of Montelius' IV . .197
101. Section of the Leubingen barrow............................ 200
102. Bronze-shafted halberd and halberd-blade from Leubingen
barrow .......... 201
103. (1) Pit-comb ware from Karelia; (2) vase of East Swedish
style from Aland Islands; (3) flint sculptures from
Volosovo .......... 204
104. No ST vet and Suomusjarvi celts, and polished chisel and
adze . 205
105. Maglemosian types which survive: (1-4) Esthonia {after Clark)',
(5) Ukraine; (6) leister from Ural peat bog . . . 206
106. Slate knives and dart-head, Sweden, stone mace-heads,
Finland, and slate pendant ...... 207
107. Knives and axe from Seim a hoard . . . . .211
108. Rock-cut tomb, Castelluccio, and corbelled tomb, Los
Millares ...................................................214
109. Rock-cut tomb and naveta, Balearic Islands . . .216
no. Segmented cist, North Ireland, and Giants’ Tomb, Sardinia 217
in. Beakers: (1-2) Palmella, Portugal; (3) La Halliade, South
France; (4) Villafrati, Sicily . . . . . .222
112. Beaker, wrist-guard, and associated vases, Silesia {after
Seger) ........... 225
113. West European dagger (Bohemia) and flint copy (Silesia);
arrow-straightener (Wiltshire); gold-leaf from wrist-
guard AND COPPER AWL, BOHEMIA ..... 225
114. South Italian painted pottery: (i) and (2) black on buff,
Serra d’Alto ware; (3) red and black on buff, Middle
Neolithic I, Megara Hyblzea ...... 232
x
FIG.
ii5-
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
129.
13°.
I3I*
132-
133-
134*
135-
136.
137-
138.
139-
140.
141.
142.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Bossed bone plaque, Castelluccio (after Evans)
Copper and Early Bronze Age pottery: (1-2) pit-cave, Otranto;
(3) KEELED VASE WITH AXE HANDLE, “DOLMEN” OF BlSCEGLIE;
(4-5) Castelluccio ware .......
View into chamber tomb, Castelluccio .....
Knife and razor, Pantalica .......
ApENNINE VASE-HANDLES AND WINGED AXE, RAZOR, PESCHIERA
DAGGER, ANGLED SICKLE FROM PUNTO DEL TONNO
(1) Vase of North Italian Polada type; (2) square-mouthed
NEOLITHIC POT FROM ArENE CaNDIDE .....
Copper daggers and flint copies, Remedello
Peschiera safety-pin (fibula)................
Plan of “temples” at Mnaidra, Malta .....
Tripod bowl, San Bartolomeo, and vase-handle of nose-
bridge TYPE, ANGHELU B.UJU ......
Plan and elevation of tomb XXbis at Anghelu Ruju .
Necklace from Anghelu Ruju ......
(1) Gouge, El Garcel; (2) schist adze, Portugal; (3) jar, El
Garcel ..........
page
235
236
237
240
243
245
246
250
253
258
259
261
268
Stages in conventionalization of parietal art in Spain {after
Obermaier)) A, Maimon; B, Figuras; C, La Pileta . . . 269
Flint arrow-heads: (i) Alcala; (5) Los Millares. Halberd
blades; (3) Casa da Moura; (4) Los Millares; (2) Palmella
points .......... 271
“Late Neolithic” vase from Tres Cabezos, and symbol vases
from Los Millares . . . . . . . .272
Ritual objects: (i) Almeria; (2 and 4) Portugal; (3) Granada 273
Copper daggers and adze, AlcalA, and bone pin, Cabeqo da
Ministra. .......... 275
Plan of “neolithic” passage grave and part of the furniture,
S.E. Portugal [after Leisner) ...... 277
Argaric burial-jar showing diadem, funerary vases, halberd,
dagger-blades, and sword {by permission of Trustees of British
Museum) .......... 283
Antler harpoon and bone arrow-head, Switzerland . . 289
Cortaillod pottery {after ‘Antiquity’) ..... 290
Plan of a house at Aichbuhl ...... 292
Michelsberg pottery ........ 294
Types of antler sleeves for axes: A-B, Lower; C, first in
Middle; D, first in Upper Neolithic; Lake NeuchAtel . 296
Bone copies of Unetician pins ...... 297
Mondsee pottery ......... 300
Vase-supports in Chassey style: (i) Le Moustoir, Carnac;
(2) Motte de la Garde, Charente........304
xi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
143. Late Chalcolithic types from Cevennian cists: (a-e) Liquisse;
(f~i) Grotte d’en Quisse, Gard; (j-o) “dolmens” of Aveyron 308
144. Polypod bowl, La Halliade ....... 310
145. Statue-menhirs from Gard and sculptured tomb, Petit
Morin (Marne) ......... 312
146. Horgen pot from Paris cist, and channelled pot from
Conguel, Morbihan . *313
147. Arc-pendant of stone . 313
148. Passage grave, Kercado, Morbihan ..... 316
149. Breton Bronze Age vase ....... 320
150. Lop-sided, tanged-and-barbed and leaf-shaped arrow-heads 323
151. Windmill Hill pot-forms (after Piggott) ..... 324
152. Passage grave in horned cairn, 240 ft. long, Yarrows,
Caithness ............................................. 327
153. Long stalled cairn, Midhowe, Rousay ..... 327
154. Gold earring ......... 330
135. Peterborough bowl from Thames, and sherds from West
Kennet Long Barrow (by permission of Trustees of British
Museum) .......... 333
156. Evolution of a socketed spear-head in Britain (after Green-
well): (1) Hintlesham, Suffolk; (2) Snowshill, Glos.; (3)
Arreton Down, Isle of Wight . . . . . -335
157. Segmented Fayence beads, Wilts (by permission of Trustees of
British Museum) ......... 336
158. Food Vessels from Argyll and East Lothian . . . 337
159. Gold lunula, Ireland {by permission of Trustees of British Museum) 338
Map I—Europe in Period I ...... 348
Map II—Europe in Period II ...... 349
Map Ilia—Period III: Megalithic Tombs .... 350
Map III6—Period III: Beakers and Battle-axes . . . 351
Map IV—Period IV : Early Bronze Age Cultures and Trade
Routes................................................. 352
Xll
PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION
When the First Edition was written as a pioneer attempt at a com-
prehensive survey of European prehistory, the archaeological record
was so fragmentary that a pattern could only he extracted by filling
up the gaps with undemonstrable guesses. A spate of excavations,
investigations and publications in the next twenty years rendered
obsolete some of those speculations, enriched the record with a wealth
of often quite unexpected facts, but actually complicated the picture.
Since 1945 still more intense activity has doubled the available data,
but in some points has simplified the scene; several formerly discrete
assemblages now appear as aspects of a very few widespread cultures.
Moreover, the new technique of radio-carbon dating, though still very
much in the experimental stage, offers at least the hope of an inde-
pendent time-scale against which archaeological events in several
regions can be compared chronologically. These advances allow and
demand drastic revision and re-arrangement of my text. At the same
time the fresh data, as much as Mongait’s pertinent criticisms in his
Introduction to the Russian translation, have induced a less dog-
matically “Orientalist” attitude than I adopted in 1925. In particular
the discovery that not all farmers were potters has entailed a complete
revaluation of the ceramic evidence! Radio-carbon dating has indeed
vindicated the Orient’s priority over Europe in farming and metallurgy.
But the speed and originality of Europe’s adaptation of Oriental
traditions can now be better appreciated; it should be clear why, as
well as that, a distinctively European culture had dawned by our
Bronze Age! Two more points should be noted. The radio-carbon dates
here given, many of them unofficial, axe all subject to a margin of error
of several centuries and must be regarded as tentative and provisional!
Secondly, to me the Near East still means what it meant in English
before 1940 and still means in American, Dutch, French and Russian.
For opportunities of studying at first hand the latest finds from
Eastern Europe I wish to thank the Academies of Sciences of Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Roumania, the U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia,
and to colleagues in those countries as well as in Austria, Belgium, the
British Isles, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Poland,
Sweden, Turkey and the U.S.A. I am grateful for information on un-
published finds, for reprints, drawings and photographs. Dr. Isobel
Smith has very kindly read the proofs.
March 1957. . V. G. C.
xiii
Prometheus:
CHAPTER I
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
Despite a startling refinement of industrial equipment and a masterly
graphic art, Pleistocene Europe altogether lacked civilization in the
economic sense. During the last Ice Age collective hunts on open
steppes and tundras in South Russia, Moravia, and France yielded
such plenteous and reliable supplies of mammoth, reindeer, bison, and
horse flesh, that the hunters could establish relatively permanent
camps and enjoy leisure to cultivate art. But they remained, none the
less, pure food-gatherers, dependent on what the environment offered
them. With the passing of glacial conditions, the old herds vanished;
forest, invading the open lands, rendered obsolete the familiar tech-
nique of communal hunting, and so the culture based thereon shrivelled
and decayed. Indeed, last century it appeared that Europe, abandoned
by reindeer- and mammoth-hunters, was left an empty wilderness for
neolithic immigrants to subdue to pasturage and tillage.
Forty years’ researches have erased the last outlines of that picture.
Archaeologists have discovered the remains left by various communities
occupying Europe continuously since the close of the Ice Age, but still
lacking the hall-marks of neolithic civilization. Their remains consti-
tute cultures that are termed mesolithic, because in time—but only in
time—they occupy a place between the latest palaeolithic and the oldest
neolithic cultures. At the same time botanists and geologists have
defined more precisely the changes in environment to which the meso-
lithic cultures were adaptations. Modern vegetation was only slowly
established in the glacial landscape; a temperate climate did not
abruptly replace an arctic one.
In Northern Europe phases in the colonization of the once frozen
plains by forest trees have been determined with great precision by
pollen-analysis (i.e. a quantitative study of the pollen grains preserved
principally in peat mosses).1 The first immigrants were birches and
willows, then come pines, later the hazel, soon followed by elms, limes,
and oaks—the mixed oak woods—lastly, in Denmark, the beech. But
of course the composition of a forest is profoundly affected by topo-
graphical and geological as well as climatic factors so that even on the
North European plain itself the local variations are large and significant.
1 Zeuner, F. E., Dating the Past (London, 1954), summarizes the evidence conveniently.
A I
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Stages in the gradual amelioration of climate can also be distinguished,
largely on the basis of the same botanical evidence. In North Europe
the long late glacial phase passed over eventually into a cold conti-
nental “Pre-Boreal phase” when birches and a few pines began to
colonize the tundra. This in turn gave place to a Boreal period, still
continental but characterized by summers longer and warmer than
to-day, but severe snowy winters. Next a relatively abrupt increase
of rainfall and westerly winds affected North-Western Europe without
reducing the average annual temperature, so that the climate of
Denmark was really Atlantic, and mixed oak woods attained a maxi-
mum extension at the cost of pine woods. In Britain, on the contrary,
excessive rain and wind caused deforestation in exposed areas. Gradu-
ally the course of the Atlantic storms shifted again, allowing a second
period of forest growth in England but inducing some contraction on
the Continent. This phase, still warmer than to-day, is termed the
Sub-Boreal. It ultimately ended with the onset of modem cold wet
weather in an exaggerated form in the so-called Sub-Atlantic phase.
Of course, the terms Boreal, Atlantic and so on are not strictly applic-
able to Switzerland or South Germany and are meaningless in Mediter-
ranean lands: they were devised in Denmark and Sweden, where alone
they are accurately descriptive.
In the meanwhile the distribution of land and water was also
changing. The release of the vast volumes of water locked up in glaciers
during the Ice Age produced a general, if gradual, rise in sea-level or
marine transgression, but this was offset in the north, where the
accumulations of ice had been deepest and heaviest, by an “isostatic”
re-elevation of the earth’s crust that had been depressed by their
weight. While much of the North Sea basin was still dry land, or at
least fen (Northsealand!), uniting England to the Continent, Scotland
and Scandinavia were thus depressed by the weight of the Ice masses.
The Baltic depression was occupied by a frozen sea, communicating
with the Arctic Ocean and termed the Yoldia Sea. The rebound of the
earth's crust on the melting of the superincumbent ice raised strips
of the Scottish coast above their present relative level and isolated
the Baltic depression; it was occupied by the Ancylus Lake, rendered
slightly brackish by a small inflow of salt water across Central Sweden.
At the end of Boreal times the continued rise of sea-level flooded the
North Sea basin and salt water poured into the Baltic depression,
forming the Litorina Sea, larger and salter than the modem Baltic.
England was completely separated from the Continent, while in Scot-
land whales could swim up the enlarged Forth estuary to above
Stirling. The resultant extension of the area occupied by warm salt
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
water was perhaps the cause of the shift in storm tracks that brought
about the Atlantic phase of climate in the North. But north of a line
that runs through Southern Zealand and County Durham the isostatic
re-elevation of the land has continued so that the shore line of Atlantic
times is now represented by the “25 ft. raised beach” in North Britain
and corresponding raised strands round the Baltic. Nevertheless some
time elapsed before this local re-elevation of the land overtook the
general rise in sea-level, so that in marginal areas like Denmark and
East Anglia several local transgressions can be distinguished. In
Denmark and Southern Sweden, in fact, four have to be admitted—
the first at the beginning of the Atlantic phase, the last, and sometimes
the greatest, during early Sub-Boreal times,1 coinciding with Northern
Neolithic III a and b (p. 176).
This changing environment constitutes for the archaeologist a pro-
visional chronological framework, but contemporary men had to
adjust their cultures to it. To small groups of food-gatherers the
temperate forests offered greater facilities for picking up a bare liveli-
hood without intensive social co-operation or a highly specialized
kit-bag than had the bleak hunting-grounds of the Ice Age. Mesolithic
groups appear in general isolated and poorly equipped in contrast to
Magdalenians or Pfedmostians. But all had acquired, or themselves
domesticated, dogs whose co-operation would be of greatest assistance
to man precisely in the pursuit of the smaller, less gregarious game of
the new woodland. Everywhere the collection of nuts, snails, and
shell-fish played a conspicuous part in the new economy. Several of
the mesolithic cultures are clearly just the responses of palaeolithic
survivors to the new environment.
The Swiderian culture,2 represented by assemblages of small flint
tools collected from sand-dunes in Russia and Poland, sometimes under
fossil turf-lines of Atlantic age, is characterized by small asymmetrically
Fig. i. Swiderian flint implements, Poland. After Kozlowski (£).
1 “Aamosen” (1943), 162; Arsberattelse (1937-38), 36-96; cf. New Phytologist, XL1V
(1944), 64.
2 Confined effectively to the woodland zone; KS., XXXI (1950), 96-110; LIX, 7-9;
cf. Clark (1936), 62.
3
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
tanged-points (Fig. i) used presumably as arrow-heads, but morpho-
logically descended from the large dart-heads used by the South
Russian mammoth-hunters. Such was their ultimate response to the
extinction of the mammoth.
Descendants of the Franco-Cantabrian Magdalenians, who combined
with hunting and collecting fishing with the harpoon in the ancestral
manner, created the Azilian culture.1 The Azilians, like their ancestors,
lived by preference in caves where they buried their dead too.2 The
famous cave of Ofnet in Bavaria contained a nest of twenty-one skulls,
buried without the trunks, but not belonging certainly to Azilians.
Because eight of the skulls were brachycranial, anthropologists used
to think that the burial indicated the immigration of a new race into
Europe, but now admit that at least a tendency to round-headedness
existed among Upper Palaeolithic Europeans.3 The Azilians’ equipment
seems poor. The type fossil is the harpoon of red-deer’s antler (Fig. 2),
flat and clumsy in comparison with the ancestral Magdalenian instru-
ment of reindeer antler. Flint blades and gravers persist, but tend to
be diminutive. The cores could be used for wood-working, but were not
specialized into axes. However, some heavy wedge-like tools from the
Fig. 2. Magdalenian harpoon from Cantabria and Azilian harpoons and
painted pebbles from Ari&ge (f).
cave of Bize (Aude) may denote responses to the needs of primitive
carpentry. And in the Falkenstein cave, Hohenzollem, a ground stone
celt was found mounted in an antler sleeve with seemingly typical
Azilian harpoons.4 But now similar harpoons5 have turned up with
geometric microliths in a Tardenoisian layer in the Birsmatten cave
in the Swiss Jura so that all the Alpine-Jura “Azilian” may really be
Tardenoisian and so at best “late mesolithic”. The only reminiscences
1 Obermaier, Fossil Man in Spain (1925), 340!; PPS., XX (1954), 193-210.
2 E.g. in Axtege, L’Anfhr., XXXVIII (1928), 235.
3 See C. S. Coon, Races of Europe (1939), 35-6, 67-8.
4 Germania, XVIII (1934), 81-8.
5 Jb. Bernischen Hist. Mus., XXXIV (1954), 197-8.
4
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
of Magdalenian art are highly conventionalized figures painted on
pebbles.
The cave deposits suggest that the Azilians lived in very small and
generally isolated communities; their isolation was not, however,
complete, since shells of Columbella rusticana, imported from the Medi-
terranean, reached the Falkenstein cave. Some sort of boat must have
been available, since Azilians encamped on small islands. Azilian
encampments are found on the slopes of the Cantabrian mountains
and the Pyrenees, of the Massif Central, the Jura, Vosges, Black
Forest, and Alpine foothills, and finally on the south-west coast of
Scotland. But the industry here is distinctive enough to be regarded
as a new culture, "the Obanian",1 not certainly descended from the
French Azilian. In South France the Azilian succeeds the Magdalenian
almost immediately, presumably in Boreal times; the Scottish sites are
situated above the 25-ft. beach and must be Atlantic in age. The
discrepancy might indicate the slow rate of migration by short stages
presumably along tracts of coast now submerged.
Descendants of the local Aurignacians created a very similar culture
in early post-glacial times in the Crimea1 2 and Transcaucasia. They too
lived in caves and buried the dead therein either in the contracted
position or extended. They had tamed a local wolf or jackal to help
them in the chase. In the Crimea harpoons of bone, but of Azilian form,
and slotted points armed with flints as in the Forest cultures, appear
late. Geometric microliths, at first triangles and lunates, later also
trapezes, were made and that even in layers that contain pottery and
polished celts and so look formally neolithic.3
The Tardenoisian culture survives in the archaeological record almost
entirely in the form of pigmy flints or microliths, ingeniously worked
into regular geometrical shapes—triangles, rhombs, trapezes, and
crescents—or into microgravers (Fig. 3) that may be a by-product in
their manufacture.4 These do not really define a single culture, but
represent several disparate industries.5 As the latter can only be dis-
tinguished statistically, all will here be grouped together under the rather
misleading term Tardenoisian. All microliths were presumably parts
of composite tools of wood or bone, but no one knows why the little
blades should be so carefully trimmed. Their makers camped exclusively
on sandy soils6 that would be lightly wooded, and sheltered at first
1 Movius, H., The Irish Stone Age (Cambridge, 1942), 180 ft.
2 HanSar, Kaukasiens, 116-26, 148-50, 194-206; SA., I, 195-212; V, 160-75, 299; for
the fauna MIA., XXXIX (1953). 460-2.
8 SA., V, 97-100; KS., IV (1940), 29.
4 Clark, Meso. Britain, 97-103.
5 PPS., XXI (1955). 14-19. 8 Clark (1936), 190-4.
5
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
often in caves, but also in flimsy huts1 partly sunk into the sandy soil.
At Muge1 2 on the Tagus and on Teviec and Hoedic, two tiny islets off
the coast of Morbihan,3 Tardenoisians settled on the open shore,
hunting and collecting shell-fish and leaving mounds composed of the
Fig. 3. Geometric microliths (2-5) and microgravers (1) from Franconia.
After Gumpert (f).
debris of their repasts. Skeletons, some brachycranial, were buried
in these midden heaps in the contracted attitude. On Teviec and
Hoedic a little cairn was heaped over each of the corpses, which were
sprinkled with ochre; some were covered with a sort of crown of stags’
antlers. In the Ligurian cave of Arene Candide,4 too, was a mesolithic
—perhaps more Azilian than Tardenoisian—cemetery of ten graves,
each containing an extended adult, twice accompanied by an infant,
lying on a bed of ochre.
A tendency to reduce the size of flint blades was common to most
Upper Palaeolithic industries. It led to the production of geometric
forms already in the Gravettian of France and Italy,5 while at Parpallo
in Eastern Spain6 even microburins occur from the Solutrian layers
upward. This tendency was perhaps more marked in the Mediterranean
environment than on the steppes and tundras of periglacial Europe
and strongest in North Africa. There a profusion of geometric micro-
1 Clark (1936), 198; Antiquity, XI (1937), 477; Gumpert, Frank. Mesolithikum
(Mannus Bibliothek, 40), 14-27.
2 Obermaier, op. cit., p. 324; Breuil and Zbyszewski, "Revision des industries de
Muge”, Communicagoes dos Servicios geologicos, XXVIII (Lisbon, 1947); Roche, J.,
L'lndustrie du Cabego d'Amoreira {Muge) (Porto, 1951).
3 Pequart, Boule and Vallois, Teviec, IPH., Mem. 18 (1937), with important section
on mesolithic races; Pequart, M. and St. J., Hoedic (Anvers, 1954).
4 Riv. St. Lig., XII (1946), 36-7.
6 L’Anthr., XLIX (1939-40), 702; Riv. St. Lig. XIV (1948). 16-19.
* Pericot, La Cueva del Parpalld (Madrid, 1942), 67, 92.
6
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
liths characterizes the middens and other deposits of the later Capsian
culture. Moreover, these Capsians buried their dead in the middens.
Some Tardenoisians may then be immigrants, driven north by the
incipient desiccation of the Sahara at the close of the European Ice
Fig. 4. Microliths from Muge, Portugal, and transverse arrow-head shafted
from Denmark (f).
Age. The flints from such sites as the cave of La Cocina in Eastern
Spain are indeed virtually identical with the late Capsian.1 The top-
most layers of this cave yielded “Almerian” pottery which we shall
see (p. 268) represents a neolithic of Capsian tradition. It does not
follow that all makers of “Tardenoisian microliths” were recent
immigrants from Africa. Such microliths are found in most parts of
France, Britain, Belgium, South Germany, Poland, and the Pontic
Steppes; most are derivatives of local Upper Palaeolithic industries,
and had emerged in Britain, France, Belgium, and Germany by Boreal
times.2 But in both Britain3 and France,4 and probably too in south-
west Germany5 and Portugal,6 Tardenoisians still survived, retaining
their primitive economy and microlithic traditions in industry, when
a neolithic or even a Bronze Age economy had already been established
among neighbouring groups. And certain Tardenoisian types—trapezes
and lunates—used by later communities in the Peninsula, France,
and South Russia, may denote the absorption of Tardenoisian hunters
by food-producing peoples. Microlithic must not be mistaken for
mesolithic. On the other hand, isolated bones of sheep, reported
exceptionally from pure Tardenoisian layers, otherwise pre-neolithic,7
suggest the possibility that the term Tardenoisian may include some
1 Vaufrey, L’Afrique, 413.
2 Clark (1936), 211-13.
3 Ibid., 217; 1932, 51.
4 E.g. at Sauveterre (Lot-et-Garonne) Tardenoisian microliths were associated with
finger-tipped cordoned pottery and tanged and barbed arrowheads, Conlanges, IPH.
Mem. 14 (1935), 26.
6 Chile, Danube, 18.
6 Sherds of decorated “cave” pottery were found at least in the upper levels of the
midden.
7 Lacam, et al., Le Gisement misolithique du Cuzoul, IPH .Mem. 21 (1944), 11; Pequart,
et al., Teviec, IPH .Mem. 18 (1937), 101 • At Mas d’Azil even un tas de bU was once
mentioned.
7
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
early immigrant sheep-breeders who made no pots nor ground stone
celts.
Asturian1 is the term applied to the culture of strandloopers who
succeeded the Azilians on the coasts of North Spain and appear in
Portugal too. They lived very largely on shell-fish during a period of
greater rainfall than the present and are characterized in the archaeo-
logical record by a pick-like tool formed by chipping a beach pebble
to a rough point.
Though inhabiting wooded countries, none of the communities so
far described give any sign of a sustained effort to master this element
in their environment by the elaboration of specialized carpenter’s tools.
Peoples occupying the forested plain of North Europe, on the contrary,
did develop adzes and axes for dealing with timber. To emphasize this
adaptation to their environment they may be grouped together as the
Forest folk. Their ancestors had advanced as far north as Jutland
before the end of Pre-Boreal times. The pioneers in the colonization
were known down till 1936 only by stray discoveries of “ Lyngby
axes”—reindeer antlers on which the brow tine has been trimmed to
form an adze or an axe edge, or the socket for a flint blade (Fig. 5),
Fig. 5. "Lyngby axe” of reindeer antler, Holstein (£).
which, however, are ill-adapted for chopping and were doubtless used
as clubs. In 1936 a camp of reindeer-hunters who used them was
located on the banks of a shallow mere at Stellmoor near Hamburg
and revealed the content of the Ahrensburg culture.2 The reindeer
were killed with wooden arrows smoothed on grooved stone straighteners
(like Fig. 113) and tipped with asymmetrically tanged flint points;
game or fish were speared with barbed harpoons made on strips roughly
wrenched from reindeers’ antlers.
A reindeer’s skull, mounted on a post, was planted on the shore like
a totem pole.
1 Obermaier, op. tit., 349-58; Pericot, Hist. Espaiia.
z Rust, A., Die alt- and miUtlsteinzeitliche Funde von Stellmoor (Neumunster, 1943).
8
Prometheus:
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
Stellmoor was just a temporary camp where the Ahrensburg hunters
spent summer and autumn, retreating presumably farther south to
winter. Their ancestors should doubtless be sought among the Eastern
Gravettians; "Lyngby axes" had in fact been used in late pleistocene
times in Moravia,1 Hungary, and Romania.1 2 At the same time flint
axes were already being used in South Russia.3
The Ahrensburg folk were, however, not the direct or sole ancestors
of the Forest tribes who did develop an effective wood-working equip-
ment. These can most clearly be recognized at Star Carr in Yorkshire
near Scarborough.4 There in Pre-Boreal times about 7500 b.c. (accord-
ing to a radio-carbon estimate) used to winter a band of four "house-
holds” of hunter-fishers on the banks of an extinct lake. They fished
from a rough platform of birch trunks sloping down into the mere.
They had felled the trees with chipped flint celts, edged by a tranchet
blow—i.e. a blow at right angles to the main axis of the flint; both the
celts and the flakes detached in resharpening them were found lying
between the logs.
Game—elk, red deer, and wild ox—and the birds were slain with
arrows or darts tipped with geometric microliths; fish speared with
leisters. The barbed prongs of the latter, usually called harpoons, were
fashioned on strips neatly carved from stags’ antlers by the groove-
and-splinter technique inherited from the Aurignacian,5 but in form
foreshadow the classical Maglemosian bone points of the Boreal period.
To aid them in the chase as disguises or to ensure an ampler supply of
game in magic ceremonies the hunters wore frontlets carrying the
antlers cut from stags’ skulls. Similar Forest folk must have been
spread all over Northsealand and perhaps farther east, but are directly
attested only in Denmark by distinctive flints.
Certainly by Boreal times the Forest folk had spread all over the
still unbroken North European plain from Southern England to Fin-
land, and had achieved a very nice adjustment to their environment
of pine woods, interrupted only by lakes and rivers. While hunting
expeditions brought the widely scattered groups into contact from
time to time, fishing beside streams and meres encouraged more per-
manent encampment so that equipment was already being differen-
tiated locally to meet divergent conditions. Within the larger con-
tinuum local facies or cultures can be distinguished in England,
1 In the Magdalenian levels of the Pekarna cave and in the contemporary camp of
Pavlovce near Dolni VSstonice.
2 Dacia, V-VI (1934-35), 12, pi. Ill; cf., Antiquity, XVI (1942), 259.
3 At Kostienki I; KS , XXXI (1950), 168.
4 Clark, G., Star Carr (Cambridge, 1954).
3 APL., IV (1955), 195 f-
9
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Denmark, North Germany,1 the East Baltic2 (Kunda), and perhaps
the Norwegian coast. But the Maglemose near Mullerup and other
classic sites in Zealand supply material for an adequate picture, applic-
able with modifications to the rest.
These were summer-camps, submerged each winter, whither men
repaired for hunting, fowling, fishing, and nut-gathering. To secure
I 5 6 8
Fig. 6. Maglemosian types from Zealand. 1-3, 7-8 (£); 4 (§); 5-6 ($).
food they had devised or perfected a highly efficient equipment—
for hunting, bows3 of elm wood reinforced with sinews from which
were shot wooden arrows armed with geometric microliths inserted
into grooves on the shaft or merely gummed on with birch-pitch,4
slotted bone points, also armed with small flints (Fig. 6, 3), and clubs
with spheroid or spiked stone heads perforated by percussion. Their
still more specialized fishing tackle5: leisters with several kinds of
barbed bone prongs (Fig. 6, 1-2; cf. Fig. 105, 6), bone fish-hooks, nets
1 Clark, Northern Europe (1936); cf. Childe, PCBL, 26-8.
2 Indreko, "Die mittlere Steinzeit in Estland”, K. V. H. A. Akademiens, Handlingar,
LXVI (Stockholm, 1948); SMYA., LVII (1956) (the Askola culture).
3 FNA. (1945), 63-5.
1 Arsberattelse (1951), 123-36. 8 Clark, Preh. Eur., 42-8.
10
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
of lime bast with pine bark floats and ingenious wicker weels (traps).
For killing fur-bearing animals with minimum damage to the pelts
they employed conical wooden arrow-heads which east of the Baltic
were translated into bone (Fig. 105); there an antler pick had been
specialized for breaking the ice. Bone needles were made for netting,
flint gravers for cutting bone, small disc scrapers (Fig. 6, 4) for dressing
skins, and split boars’ tusks for knives. The wood-worker was now
provided with chisels of antler, socketed chisels made from marrow
bones of large game (Fig. 6, 8), perforated antler adzes, and flint core-
axes (Fig. 6, 5) or exceptionally flake-axes (Fig. 6, 6) mounted as
adze-blades in perforated antler sleeves (Fig. 6, 7). East of the Baltic,
where flint was scarce, the adze-blades were pebbles sharpened, like
the antler tools, by grinding. In England the flake-axe was still un-
known.
Communications were maintained most easily by water in boats,
presumably of skins, which have not survived, though the paddles that
propelled them are extant. For land transport over the winter snows
sledges were available east of the Baltic.1 Dogs of a wolfish type were
everywhere domesticated and may be the ancestors of modem sledge-
dog breeds. The electrical properties of amber had already been recog-
nized as a magic virtue so that the substance was collected in Den-
mark. .Esthetic satisfaction was obtained by decorating bone imple-
ments with geometric patterns, generally outlined by a series of points
in the so-called drill-technique.
Remarkably exact replicas of the Maglemosian bone equipment
have been recovered from undated levels of peat bogs in the Urals,
but these can hardly be used to document an eastern origin for the
Maglemosians; Briusov2 suggests that a common southern origin for
both the Baltic and Uralian groups would adequately explain the
agreements. An eastward spread would seem more likely; for the Magle-
mosian is a natural development of the Pre-Boreal cultures of North-
sealand. So too the Komsa and Fosna cultures, represented by assem-
blages of stone tools (including tranchet celts) from high strands on
the Norwegian coasts,3 must be due to a simultaneous coastwise
spread from the same region.4
The marine transgression that ushered in the Atlantic phase broke
up the unity of the Forest cultures and offered new opportunities to
1 A runner was recovered from a Boreal peat in Finland, SM., XXXVTII-XXXIX
(1931-2), 60; XLI, 121; XLII, 22.
2 OUerM, 146-8, 168-9; he would derive the Kunda culture from the east but not the
west Baltic Maglemosian.
8 Bee and Nummedal, Le FinnmarMen (Oslo, 1936).
4 Freundt, “Komsa, Fosna, Sandarna”, Acta Arch., XIX (1948), 4-55, but cf. SMYA.,
LVII.
II
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
certain groups. Rich oyster banks combined with sealing and sea-
fishing allowed communities to settle down at sheltered spots along
the Danish and South Swedish coasts. The Ertebslle culture represents
an appropriate adjustment.1 The sites are marked by huge shell-heaps
(that may be 100 yards long and 30 yards wide), the refuse of a more
sedentary population. The exposure of new deposits of superior flint
resulted in an increasing substitution of flint for bone in making heavy
tools. Flake-axes were preferred to picks, plump green-stone axes were
sometimes made by grinding, as earlier in the East Baltic, but perfor-
ated antler axes2—no longer adzes—and sleeves for axes were still
Fig. 7. Ertebolle pot, antler axes and bone combs, Denmark (£).
made. The only microliths manufactured were transverse arrow-heads.
Fish were not speared with harpoons but caught with hook and line.
The sedentary life permitted the manufacture of pottery in the form
of large jars with pointed bases and troughs that may have been used
as blubber lamps. A taste for personal adornment is indicated by bone
combs and armlets. The dead were buried extended in the middens,3
generally without grave goods, occasionally wrapped in a birch-bark
shroud4 and laid upon a bier, or once apparently cremated.5 On the
other hand, human bones, broken up just like those of game, afford
good evidence for cannibalism.6
1 Clark, Northern Europe, 138-56, but cf. now Acta Arch., VIII (1937), 278-94;
Mathiassen, “Bopladsen Dyrholmen”, K. Dansk. Videns. Selskabs, Ark.-Kunsthist.
Skrifter, I, 1 (1942); Bagge and Kjellmark, Siretorp.; "Aamose”, 136-44; and Althin,
Scania.
2 These “axes” and the earlier "adzes” would not be much good for chopping, since
the shafts actually preserved are hazel stems not over 2 cm. thick though as much as
50 cm. long; Mathiassen, “Dyrholmen”, 24.
a Brondsted, Danmarks, i, 115; round heads exceeded long heads in the ratio of 3 to 2,
ibid., 123.
4 FNA. (1945), 6.
5 Sellerod Bogen (1946), 33. Degerbol, in Mathiassen, "Dyrholmen”, 118-20.
12
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
Now a local invention of pottery cannot be a priori ruled out and
ground stone adzes had been made in Boreal times (p. n). So the
Erteb0lle culture as just described could be regarded as an auto-
chthonous adjustment of the native culture of the Boreal phase—if
not of the classical Maglemosian as illustrated in the lakeside camps,
at least of its hypothetical counterpart as developed on the now sub-
merged coasts of Northsealand. However, in 1953 Troels-Smith1 showed
that bones of domestic cattle and sheep or goats, and sherds bearing
imprints of naked barley and of emmer and hexaploid wheats, do occur
in several Ertebplle middens in Denmark that are dated by pollen-
analysis to the Atlantic phase, while weeds of cultivation were already
growing in their vicinity. Accordingly some Ertebplle folk were not
mere food-gatherers, but farmers cultivating the soil and keeping
domestic animals, tethered and stalled and not allowed to graze freely.
Moreover, the earliest “neolithic” pots—Becker's A funnel-beakers—
were made by the same technique and found on the same sites as the
coarse “mesolithic” jars and troughs.
As there were no wild sheep or goats to tame in Denmark nor wild
cereals to cultivate, an actual infiltration of neolithic farmers must be
admitted in Denmark already. Their stock and grains point unam-
biguously to the south-east, their diffusion forms a major theme in
subsequent chapters. Meanwhile a pure continuation of the old gather-
ing economy can be traced round the North Sea and the Baltic.
While the coastal populations thus took advantage of a new environ-
ment, the communities inhabiting Norway, Central Sweden, the East
Baltic lands and even the interior of Jutland and Schleswig-Holstein
remained true to the Boreal way of life and preserved much of the old
equipment—particularly harpoons or, as in the Gudenaa culture of
Jutland,1 2 geometric microliths—throughout the greater part of the
Atlantic phase. Similar survivals to the south and east maybe inferred
from geometric microliths collected in Southern Sweden3 and Poland.4
To the West the culture of Lower Halstow on the Thames estuary,5
dated botanically to Atlantic times, with its flake-axes provides a
good parallel to Danish Erteb0lle in its mesolithic aspect. The Horsham
culture of Southern England6 characterized by core-axes and many
microliths should be partly contemporary though the absence of flake-
axes and the archaism of the microliths might suggest an earlier date.
1 Aarbsger (1953)- 5-62.
2 Mathiassen, Aarbeger (1937).
8 Althin, Scania, 159; Fv. (1944). 257-79-
4 WA., XX (1954), 23-66; at Janislavice (Skierniewice Dist.) a sitting skeleton showing
Lapponoid features is assigned to this phase.
5 Clark, Northern Europe, 158. 8 Childe, PCBI., 28.
13
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
In Scotland an antler axe found with a stranded whale in the Atlantic
estuary of the Forth above Stirling1 and similar implements from
Obanian sites farther west are in good Erteb0lle traditions. How far
to the south-west the Forest culture had spread in Atlantic times before
it was overlaid or transformed by immigrant neolithic farmers cannot
yet be determined. The famous site of Le Campigny, Seine Inferieure,
once the patent station for a mesolithic culture, now proves to be the
hilltop settlement of fully neolithic Western farmers (p. 305).1 2
The mesolithic cultures just described prove the continued occupation
of large tracts of Europe from the glorious days of mammoth-hunting
and the existence there of sparse but vigorous populations that could
expand when the introduction of cereals and domestic stock offered
an enlarged food supply. They may, moreover, be credited with positive
contributions to later cultures that must be adapted to a like environ-
ment. Most conspicuously had the Forest folk perfected an apparatus
for exploiting the natural resources of their habitat, items of which
survive to the present day where the environment has persisted.
Fish-traps and leisters, structurally identical with those devised in
Boreal times, are still used by fishermen round the Baltic—a striking
example of a craft tradition persisting locally for some eight thousand
years. So they had discovered the process of making birch-pitch, an
artificial material still used by the peasants of the region.3 Forest folk
had perfected an efficient kit of wood-working tools and in particular
the ingenious tranchet technique for edging flint chopping-tools. That
is not to say that this technique was diffused from Northern Europe
to Italy, Egypt, Palestine, and the Solomon Islands, where it was
certainly applied. It had in fact been anticipated in the late Acheulian
cleavers of the Lower Palaeolithic and in the rare Moustierian coupons
of the last Ice Age.4 The positive contributions made by Swiderians,
Azilians, Asturians, and the diverse groups here termed Tardenoisian
are less well documented, but surely not altogether negligible. But by
themselves none of the food-gatherers of temperate Europe could turn
into food-producers. Is it not significant that mesolithic cultures are
most richly represented in regions remote from the oldest historical
centres of civilization and the native habitat of wild cereals and wild
sheep? Whatever part mesolithic folk may have formed in neolithic
populations, the flocks of sheep and the seeds of grain on which the
new economy was based were not carried by wind or intertribal barter,
but brought by actual immigrant shepherds and cultivators.
1 Clark, Preh. Eur., 65.
2 But cf. Nougier, Les Civilisations campigniennes (Paris, 1950).
3 Clark, Preh. Eur., 208-9. 4 Peyrony, Prehist., Ill, 17.
14
CHAPTER II
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
The now desiccated zone of North Africa and Hither Asia had been
grassy prairie when Northern Europe was tundra or ice-sheet. On the
upland steppes of South-West Asia grew wild grasses which under
cultivation became barleys and wheats—the ancestor of one-corn
wheat (Triticum monococcum) from the southern Balkans to Armenia
and wild emmer (Triticum dicoccoides) from Palestine to Iran.1 Sheep
and cattle fit for domestication were roving there too. In such an
environment human societies could successfully adopt an aggressive
attitude to surrounding nature and proceed to the active exploitation
of the organic world.
At Jarmo in Kurdistan2 the inhabitants of a little hilltop village
were cultivating emmer and barley that already exhibit some effects
of domestication as early as 4750 B.c. In Palestine where the meso-
lithic Natufians had been reaping annual grasses,3 farming may have
started before 6000 b.c. at Jericho.4 But neither at Jarmo nor at
Jericho did the first farmers make pottery.
Stock-breeding and the cultivation of cereals were revolutionary
steps in man’s emancipation from dependence on the external environ-
ment. They put man in control of his own food-supply so far that
population could—and did—expand beyond the narrow limits imposed
by the naturally available supply of wild fruits and game. But the
expansion of population led by its very conditions to the expansion
of the revolutionaries themselves—the primitive half-sedentary farmers
—or their transmutation by a second revolution into a settled peasantry
producing surplus food-stuffs for its own surplus offspring who had
become artisans and traders, priests and kings, officials and soldiers in
an urban population.
The second revolution was accomplished first in the valleys of the
Nile, the Euphrates, and the Indus. There irrigation cultivation had
produced a surplus vast enough to support the whole superstructure
of literate civilization. By 3000 b.c. archaeology and written history
reveal Mesopotamians and Egyptians already grouped in vast cities
1 On the cereals see Helbaek, Inst. Arch. All., IX (1953), 44-52.
a Braidwood, R. Antiquity, XXIV (1950), 190-6.
3 Childe, NLMAE., 28-30.
i Antiquity, XXX (1956), 196.
15
Prometheus:
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
any one of which might, like Erech, measure two square miles in area,
and in which secondary industry and trade offered an outlet for the
surplus rural population.
In New Light on the Most Ancient East I have tried to sketch in some
details in that prehistoric background of Oriental history. And I have
tried to show too how the first revolution that precedes it had to spread,
and how the growing demands of the new urban centres of population
and wealth must involve the propagation both of the arts and crafts
on which the second revolution rested and of the economy that sus-
tained it. To find food for rising generations, the simplest step was to
bring fresh land under cultivation and annex new pastures. That
meant a continuous expansion of colonization and the progressive
multiplication of farming villages. But the surplus accumulated in
Egyptian and Mesopotamian cities could serve as capital for the
promotion of trading expeditions through which the villages thus
founded could share in the surplus and use it in their turn for the
development of secondary industries. To obtain this share by supplying
the effective demands of civilized societies, the Anatolian or Syrian
villages must turn themselves into towns producing a surplus of farm-
produce to support industrial workers and traders. And villages, thus
urbanized, must become secondary centres of demand and for diffusion;
they must in turn repeat the process of propagation, generating thereby
tertiary centres to carry on the work. We should thus expect a hier-
archy of urban or semi-urban communities, zoned, not only in space
but also in time and in cultural level around the metropoles of Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and India. How far does prehistoric Europe confirm such
anticipation?
Farming must of course have started in South-West Asia. But in
tracing its primary expansion thence, it must now be remembered
that the first farmers were not necessarily also potters; the first peasant
colonists to reach Europe may not have left a trail of potsherds to mark
their tracks! And those tracks were not necessarily on land. Fishing
communities along the Levant coasts could perfectly well have learned
to supplement the produce of food-gathering by cultivating cereals
and breeding stock. Such incipient food-producers, forced to colonize
fresh territories, might perfectly well have taken to their boats and
paddled or sailed on the alluring waters of the Mediterranean to the
next landfall—and then the next.
By its spatial position and by special favours of the winds and
currents the great island of Crete is easily accessible from the Nile,
from Syria, from Anatolia, and from peninsular Greece. Its fertile
16
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
lowlands guarantee a living to farmers and orchardists; its resources
in timber, copper, and other raw materials can supply the needs of
secondary industry; its natural harbours are not only bases for fisher-
men but havens for merchants who can transport Cretan produce to
urban centres and bring back in return the manufactures and also the
science of older cities.
The ruins of neolithic villages have formed a tell, 6-5 m. high,
beneath the oldest Minoan levels at Knossos in Central Crete, where
the Minoan civilization was first identified. But trial pits have revealed
but little of the neolithic culture.1 It was formally neolithic in that
pebbles were ground and polished to make plump celts (axes and chisels).
But obsidian was imported from Melos and from Yali so that the
farmers were hardly self-sufficing. For the later levels indeed the term
neolithic is not even formally correct, since a copper flat axe was found
on a house floor with stone celts. Stone was also drilled to make spheroid
and pear-shaped mace-heads and worked into studs and even vases.
The latest houses consisted of agglomerations of small chambers with
fixed hearths and stone foundations for their walls.
Pottery,1 2 though hand made, was of fine quality, self-coloured grey-
black or red-brown according as to whether it were fired in a reducing
or an oxidizing atmosphere; the surface was often burnished, sometimes
so as to produce a decorative rippled effect. The forms cannot be
called primitive: the vases may be provided with genuine handles
(including wish-bone, nose-bridge, and flanged ribbon handles) as well
as simple and trumpet lugs; some vases have short spouts, most flat
bases. Goblets on tall half-hollow pedestals and fruit-stands with
hollow feet appear before the period ends. Ladles are common, as in
neolithic Egypt and Western Europe. Some middle neolithic vessels
have club rims, as in Portugal and Britain. The potter decorated her
products with incised patterns, including triangles and ribbons filled
with punctuations. In the transitional pottery of the Trapeza cave3 in
the mountainous interior a schematized human face was modelled on
the vase rim.
For their fertility rituals the farmers modelled in clay or carved in
soft stone highly conventionalized figurines of the "Mother Goddess’*,
seated or squatting (Fig. 8). As amulets they wore miniature stone
axes pierced for suspension (axe-amulets). Caves were used for burials
but for individual interments, not as ossuaries.4
Since palaeolithic food-gatherers have left no relics on the island, we
1 Pendlebury, Archeology of Crete (London, 1939), 35-41.
2 BSA., XLVIII (1953). 94-134-
8 BSA., XXXVI, 30.
BSA., XXXVIII, 15.
B
17
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
may assume that the earliest Cretan farmers were immigrants who
brought their neolithic equipment with them. “Neolithic Crete”, writes
Evans, “may be regarded as an insular offshoot of an extensive Ana-
tolian province.” His table (Fig. 8) shows many Asiatic relatives to
the squatting figurines. The self-coloured pots, with handles and spouts,
have a general Anatolian aspect, the fine grey wares can be paralleled
in the “Chalcolithic levels” of Megiddo1 and in the deepest layers of
Engberg and Shipton, "The Chalcolithic Pottery of Megiddo” (O.I.C. Studies, xo), 6x.
18
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
many Asiatic tells.1 The mace-heads too belong to an Asiatic family
but recur, like the axe-amulet, in the neolithic village of Merimde2 in
Lower Egypt, which also yielded plump axes and clay ladles. But
punctured ribbon decoration and pedestalled goblets have analogies
also in the Balkans (p. 91), and the wish-bone handle is typical of the
Macedonian Bronze Age, while Trapeza ware is still more reminiscent
of Balkan and Apennine fabrics.
The “neolithic" phase was ended by a “quickening impulse from the
Nile, which permeated the rude island culture and transformed it”
into the Minoan civilization. Evans suspects an actual immigration
of predynastic Egyptians, perhaps refugees from the Delta fleeing
from Menes’ conquest. At least on the Mesara, the great plain of
Southern Crete facing Africa, Minoan Crete’s indebtedness to the Nile
is disclosed in the most intimate aspects of its culture. Not only do the
forms of Early Minoan stone vases, the precision of the lapidaries’
technique and the aesthetic selection of variegated stones as his materials
carry on the predynastic tradition: but also Nilotic religious customs
such as the use of the sistrum, the wearing of amulets in the forms of legs,
mummies and monkeys, and statuettes plainly derived from Gerzean
"block figures”,3 and personal habits revealed by depilatory tweezers
of Egyptian shape, and stone unguent palettes from the early tombs
and, later, details of costume such as the penis-sheath and the loin-
cloth betoken something deeper than the external relations of
commerce.
At the same time even more explicitly Asiatic traits can be detected
among the innovations distinguishing the "Metal Age” from the
“Neolithic” civilization. Some might indeed have been transmitted
via Egypt: block-vases—paint-pots consisting of two or more com-
partments hollowed out of a stone parallelepiped with perforated
corners—which were especially favoured in the Mesara, are common
to Sumer and Egypt in Early Dynastic times.4 But Minoan metallurgy
is based entirely on Asiatic traditions; the coppersmith cast axe-heads
with a hole through the head for shafting in the Mesopotamian manner,
the artists treated rosettes and similar figures in the Asiatic, not the
Egyptian style.5 The most striking Minoan pot-forms—the pyxis with
cylindrical neck and string-hole lid, the jug with cut-away neck and
the side-spouted jar have parallels on the Anatolian, not on the African
side; the so-called teapot with curious spout (Fig. 9) recurs without
1 Childe, NLMAE., 218.
2 Childe, NLMAE., 39.
3 Childe. NLMAE., fig. 36.
4 Evans, P. of M., II, fig. 20; cf. Childe, NLMAE., 94, 142, 163.
5 Matz, Friihhretische Siegel, 88.
T9
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
the handle—as far away as Tepe Hissar near Damghan1 and even
Anau in Turkestan. The technique of glaze paint that distinguishes
Minoan pottery had been earlier employed by the Tel Halaf potters
of North Syria. So in religion the cult of the Double-Axe is foreshadowed
by Tel Halaf amulets.1 2 The use of engraved bead and button seals as
contrasted with carved amulets is a very ancient North Syrian-Iranian
practice later adopted in Egypt as in Crete.
Fig. 9. Early Minoan III ‘‘teapots ” and button seal. After Evans.
How far fresh Anatolian or Syrian colonists—merchants or artisans
—joined with Egyptian refugees in founding the Minoan cities is for
us a secondary question. Minoan civilization was not brought ready
made from Asia nor from Africa, but was an original native creation
wherein Sumerian and Egyptian techniques and ideas were blended
to form a novel and essentially European whole. The admittedly Nilotic
and Oriental elements that we see superadded to the Cretan neolithic
culture may be treated as concrete expressions of the transformation
of the island’s economy with the support of capital accumulated in the
great consuming centres that arose, round about 3000 b.c., on the Nile
1 Schmidt, Excavations at Tipi Hissar (1931-3), and MusJ., XXIII, p. CXVI; cf.
Frankfort, "Archaeology and the Sumerian Problem” (O.I.C. Studies, 4), 57-64. In
Anatolia ldndred forms were popular under the Hittite Empires (1950-1200 B.c.);
MDOG., 75 (1937), 38- Cf. Gordon, Iraq, XIII (1951), 40-46.
2 Childe, NLMAE., fig. 105, 3.
20
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
and the Euphrates. In supplying their needs the Cretan farmer’s sons
might find a livelihood in trade and industry; their self-sufficing villages
would become commercial cities.
On the basis of the stratigraphies! sequence, best preserved at
Knossos, Sir Arthur Evans divided the Cretan Bronze Age into the
famous "nine Minoan periods” to which he attributed absolute dates
on the strength of contacts with the literate centres of civilization.
His scheme, columns I and II below, needs some revision after fifty-
five years. Firstly, the chronologies of Egypt and Mesopotamia1 have
been deflated since then. Secondly, Evans’ division was based mainly
on the sequence of ceramic styles observed at Knossos. This turns out
to be applicable to other parts of the island only with drastic modi-
fications. The ceramic art, defining Evans’ L.M.II, was a “ palace style”,
in vogue only at Knossos. The same thing had happened before. Once
it looked as if East Crete had been deserted in M.M.II, since the eggshell-
fine polychrone pottery defining that phase was lacking. In reality this
style too was confined to the palaces of Knossos and Phaestos in Central
Crete.1 2 Even in the Mesara, a fortiori in East Crete, the M.M.I style
was still in fashion as late as 1790 b.c.3 Moreover, at Knossos the Early
Minoan period is poorly represented owing to the levelling carried out
by later builders; Evans’ account had to be filled out by large drafts
on material from East Crete and the Mesara. But during E.M. Minoan
culture was by no means uniform so that there is a real danger of inflat-
ing the sequence by using local styles to represent chronological periods.
Thirdly, the first reliable synchronisms based on an actual and dated
interchange of products are afforded by M.M.II vases in Middle King-
dom Egypt securely dated about 1850 b.c. We have no Early Minoan
imports in dated contexts in Egypt or Hither Asia, and, though actual
Egyptian manufactures of Old Kingdom and even predynastic type
were imported into the island, hardly any come from closed finds.
One Egyptian jar from a Late Neolithic deposit is considered by
Reisner to be no earlier than Dynasty I. If he be right, E.M.I must
begin after 2830 or 3188 b.c. whichever date for that dynasty’s begin-
ning be accepted. Another imported vase from an E.M.I context,
however, cannot be later than Dynasty III, some four centuries later.
Further Egyptian imports imply an overlap between E.M.III—in the
Mesara and East Crete—and the rise of Dynasty XII about 2000 b.c.4
We thus have the following scheme:
1 E.g. by Sidney Smith, Alalakh and Chronology (London, 1940).
2 Aberg, Chron., IV, 201 ff.; Pendlebury, Crete, XXXI, 300-2; Demargne, Fouilles &
Mallia: Nicropoles (Etudes Cretoises, VII, Paris, 1945), 65-9.
2 Smith, AJA., XLIX (1945). 23-4.
4 Hutchinson, Antiquity, XXII (1948), 61-3.
21
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Period Abbreviation and Subdivision Absolute Date
Knossos East Crete B.C.
Early Minoan E.M.I
E.M.II
E.M.III E.M.III ? ? 2000
Middle Minoan M.M.I I85O
M.M.II M.M.I
M.M.III M.M.III I7OO
Late Minoan L.M.I 1550
L.M.I.
L.M.II1 1450
L.M.III(A) L.M.III(A) I4OO
L.H.III(B) 1300
L.H.III(C) 1200
No attempt can be made here to evoke in a few pages an adequate
picture of Minoan civilization. We must content ourselves with a brief
outline of the economic development and some reference to the indus-
trial products that are relevant for comparative purposes.
As in neolithic times the foundations of Minoan economy were
fishing, the breeding of cattle, goats, and pigs (sheep are not osteologic-
ally attested till Late Minoan times)2 and the cultivation of unidentified
cereals together with olives and other fruits. But now specialized
craftsmen—jewellers, coppersmiths, lapidaries—must have been sup-
ported by the surplus produce of the peasantry. And so in addition
to rural hamlets, larger agglomerations of population must be assumed
though no Early Minoan township has been fully excavated. Soundings
at Vasilild3 in East Crete and beneath the palace of Knossos give hints
of the existence of complexes of rectangular houses of brick and timber
on stone foundations, like the contemporary towns of Anatolia and
Mainland Greece. But even as late as M.M.I we find the rural population
living in isolated house-complexes more reminiscent of a big farm than
even a village. A dwelling of that period at Chamaizi4 was an oval
walled enclosure, measuring 20 m. by 12 m. and divided by radial
walls into eleven compartments—exactly like the Iron Age courtyard
houses and wheel dwellings of Western Britain!
Similar conclusions might be drawn from the graves. The standard
1 A diorite amphora, bearing the cartouche of Thothmes III (1500-1447) from a
L.M.II tomb near Herakleion, gives new precision to this dating; Kretika Chronika,
VI (i953)* ii-
3 Hazzadakis, Tylissc• .$? /’' ^ - r:--: r-'lroenne (1921), 77.
3 Described in Boyd :. v. >. =, :..: ? ;.
4 Evans, P. of M., I, 147.
22
Prometheus:
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
Minoan burial practice at all periods was collective interment in a
family or communal ossuary used for many generations. This practice,
foreign to Egypt, Sumer, and the Anatolian plateau, was current all
round the Mediterranean, going back to "Mesolithic” times among
the troglodyte Natufians of Palestine.1 In the Minoan ossuaries the
bones are generally lying in the utmost disorder. The dislocated con-
dition of the skeletons, which has been observed in collective tombs
farther west too, has been taken as evidence of secondary burial; the
remains would have been deposited in a temporary resting-place until
the flesh had decayed. Xanthudides’1 2 careful studies of the Mesara
burials have, however, shown that the disordered condition of the
bones was due in the main to disturbances by those undertaking later
interments who showed little respect to the former occupants of the
tomb in making room for a fresh interment. The bodies had generally
been placed on the floor of the tomb in the contracted attitude. Simi-
larly traces of fire, sometimes noted on the bones, are due to ritual or
purificatory fires kindled within the ossuary rather than to cremation.
The ossuaries themselves may be natural caves (E.M.I to M.M.I),
rectangular stone chambers, imitating two-roomed houses, or circular
enclosures commonly termed tholoi. In the Mesara the tholoi vary
in internal diameter from 4-10 to 13 m., and are entered through a low
doorway, formed of two megalithic uprights supporting a massive
lintel and often entered from a small walled enclosure. The walls are
from i*8 to 2-5 m. thick and the inner courses oversail one another as if
the whole had been roofed with a corbelled vault on the principle
employed in the Cycladic tomb illustrated in Fig. 25, 1. While it is
hard to believe that a space 30 or 40 feet across could really have been
spanned by a false dome, the smaller chambers certainly do deserve
the name of tholoi, or “vaulted tombs”. In an early example at Krazi3
in East Crete, 4*2 m. in diameter, the corpses must, as in the Cyclades
and Attica (pp. 51, 72), have been introduced through the roof, since
the door, only 0-5 m. high, was completely blocked by an accumulation
of bones and offerings; the “door” would in fact be purely symbolic
as in Egyptian mastabas and some British long barrows.
Evans has compared the Cretan tholoi to Libyan and Nubian closed
tombs of later date, but Mallowan, followed by Peake, would find the
prototypes of the Minoan tholoi in circular brick constructions of
unknown, but certainly non-sepulchral, use which he had discovered
in the chalcolithic Tel Halaf township at Arpachiya in Assyria that
1 Garrod, The Stone Age of Mount Carmel, I, 14.
2 Xanthudides and Droop, Vaulted Tombs of the Mesard.
3 AA (1929), 103.
23
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
goes back at least far into the fourth millennium b.c.1 By that date the
device of corbelling was certainly well understood in Hither Asia, but
it is not attested in Egypt before the Second or Third Dynasty. In fact,
the Minoan tholoi, like the contemporary rectangular ossuaries, may
be just imitations in permanent material of dwellings for the living,
since round houses are attested by a model from Phaestos. As the tholos
tomb was current also in the Cyclades, pottery and ornaments of
Cycladic character were abundant in the early tholos at Krazi, and
Cycladic idols occur even in the Mesara tombs, Marinatos seems
inclined to think that the type of sepulchre may have been introduced
by families from the small islands.
In East Crete (for instance at Mochlos) the house-tombs may be
grouped to form small cemeteries such as' should correspond to a
township where several lineages lived together. Tholoi are more often
isolated as if the territorial unit corresponded to a single clan or lineage.
But in the Mesara small cemeteries are known—three tholoi and a
rectangular ossuary at Koumasa, three tholoi at Platanos, etc. Such
aggregations imply the association of several kinship groups in a single
village, but no actual settlements anterior to Middle Minoan have been
yet identified in the vicinity. Both in the Mesara and at Krasi, when
the tholoi had become congested, accessory chambers were built on
to the original mausoleum to receive subsequent interments, mostly
of Middle Minoan date. And by M.M.II there developed the practice
of excavating in the soft rock sepulchres designed for a single small
family—irregular chambers entered by a short passage or antechamber
—as attested by the Mavro Speleo cemetery near Knossos.2 Cases of
cremation occur among the latest interments in an adjacent cemetery.3
A small tholos seems to have been built in an excavation in a hillside
in the same period. Subterranean chambers became the standard form
of tomb in Late Minoan times in Crete as in Mycenaean Greece. But
even before the end of Early Minoan, individual burial in small stone
cists, in clay coffins (lamakes), and in jars (pithoi) grouped in cemeteries
as contrasted with ossuaries was beginning to compete with ossuary
practice, and steadily increased in popularity during later periods.
The clay coffins4 have early parallels both in Mesopotamia and Egypt,
whereas jar burial is a specifically Anatolian-Syrian rite.
The variety of burial practices coexistent in Early Minoan times,
like the variety of ceramic traditions, suggests that the island had been
colonized by distinct communities which had not yet fused to form a
1 Iraq, II, 20, figs. 13-14.
a BSA., XXVIII (1926-27), 263-96.
3 “Archaeology in Greece”, Supplement to JHS. (1955).
4 Man, XXIX (1929), 18.
24
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
single people with an homogeneous culture. But they seem to have
lived together peaceably, as no fortifications have been found, and as
members of a single economic system in view of the uniformities in
types of metal tools, stone vases, jewellery, and seals. This system
secured and distributed foreign materials, gold, silver, lead, obsidian,
marble, and perhaps amber (from the tholos of Porti), Egyptian and
Asiatic manufactures such as fayence beads and stone vases that were
copied locally, and perhaps Cycladic figurines. Individual artisans
needed seals (buttons, beads, and prisms) that might bear scenes
symbolic of their craft; merchants stamped therewith bales of goods
exported to Asine and other mainland ports. But no regular system
of writing and ciphering was yet needed nor publicly sanctioned for
correspondence or accounts. Though sepulchral furniture discloses
considerable personal wealth, neither monumental private tombs,
palaces, nor temples indicate concentration of wealth in the hands of
capitalists human or divine. Cult was conducted in rustic sanctuaries
and grottoes. Its symbols—stone figurines imported from the Cyclades
or imitating predynastic Egyptian block figures, phalli1 and model
Fig. io. The Minoan “Mother Goddess” and (left) Homs of Consecration,
from a sealing. After Evans.
horns of consecration2 as in Anatolia, dove-pendants3 as in the Cyclades
and Assyria, and votive double-axes4 of copper and lead—while fore-
shadowing the distinctive apparatus of later Minoan ritual, still appear
in forms appropriate to domestic worship.
1 Koumisa, tholos X.
2 Mochlos, E.M.I. (P. of M., I, 57).
3 Mochlos (ibid., 102); cf. Iraq, II, fig. 51, 7.
25
Mochlos (P. of M., I, 101).
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
In Middle Minoan times power and wealth began to be concentrated
in the hands of dynasts residing in Central Crete and combining political
and religious authority. Palaces that were also temples, factories, and
warehouses were erected at Mallia, Knossos, and other sites. Special-
ization invades the domain of domestic industry. The potters’ wheel,
symbolizing the industrialization of the ceramic art, is attested from
M.M.I. The wheel itself was a large clay disc which itinerant potters
could carry about with them as they do to-day.1 Wheeled vehicles
are first represented at the same period by a model four-wheeled cart
from Palaikastro.2 They could hardly be serviceable without roads
maintained by some authority with more than local jurisdiction. And
in fact during Middle Minoan times the divergent local traditions
that had persisted throughout the preceding period were gradually
fused until Crete came to enjoy a single civilization. But the dis-
tinction between province and metropolis becomes prominent. The
provincial potters of Eastern Crete could not compete with the experts
employed in the palaces of Knossos or Phaestos in turning out poly-
chrome ware of eggshell thinness.
The priest-kings organized more effectively trade with Egypt, Melos,
peninsular Greece, and other foreign lands where even the eggshell
pottery has been discovered—in Egypt in a Twelfth Dynasty tomb
sealed some time after 1850 b.c. And this commerce must have sub-
stantially augmented their real wealth. For its administration a civil
service would be required. And the perpetual corporation thus insti-
tuted needed a socially sanctioned system of keeping records and
accounts. In fact a conventional script of an ideographic type was
developed during M.M.I and used for accountancy. The idea was
presumably borrowed from the Minoans’ correspondents in Egypt or
Syria, where writing had been in use for a thousand years. The actual
conventions were local, though several signs have Egyptian analogues
and the numeral forms are reminiscent of early Sumerian, while the
use of a clay tablet as a vehicle of writing is an Asiatic habit.
Increase of wealth is usually accompanied by increase of population.
The palace of Knossos was surrounded with an extensive town of two-
storeyed houses, known not from actual excavation so much as from
a mosaic attributed to M.M.IIb. The native population would be
swelled by the immigration of craftsmen attracted by the wealth of
Minoan courts and towns. So professional potters from Asia may have
introduced the potters’ wheel and trained native apprentices in its
use. And other specialists such as fresco-painters may have arrived to
1 Essays in Mgean Archeology, presented to Sir Arthur Evans (Oxford, 1927), 111-2S.
2 BSA., Supplementary Volume, Palaikastro (1923), 17.
26
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
minister to courtly desires for refinement. But if new arts were intro-
duced by immigrants, the Minoan schools these founded were original
and creative both in devising fresh techniques and in creating a new
naturalistic style that owed little to Oriental models. In beholding the
charming scenes of games and processions, animals and fishes, flowers,
and trees that adorned the Middle Minoan II and III palaces and
houses we breathe already a European atmosphere.
The development of Minoan civilization was interrupted by catas-
trophes which may be taken to mark the end of the phases termed
M.M.II, M.M.III, and L.M.I. The disasters are usually attributed to
earthquakes and were followed by reconstructions of the ruined palaces
without any break in the continuity of architectural, artistic, and
technical traditions. But after the last a new and simplified script—
Linear B—was introduced at Knossos, and with it apparently a new
language; for while the older, Linear A writings still defy decipherment
in 1956, Ventris and Chadwick have read the L.M.II tablets as docu-
ments in an early Greek dialect identical with that current in Mycen-
aean Greece. Thus it looks as if Knossos had become the capital of a
conquering dynast from the Mainland who established over the whole
island a regular empire of the Oriental pattern. His empire did not last.
About 1400 b.c. hostile forces razed the palace of Minos to the ground.
The hegemony in the iEgean had passed to Mycenae on the Mainland
(p. 81). But urban civilization still flourished in Crete for two centuries.
Goumia, for instance, in East Crete, now covered six acres and com-
prised some sixty houses. And the richly furnished Late Minoan
cemeteries comprising corbelled tombs (partially subterranean), rock-
hewn chamber tombs, pit-caves, and shaft graves as well as larnax
burials, remained in use in places even into the Iron Age.1
This inadequate sketch must be supplemented by a brief reference
to certain industrial products that will be cited in later chapters dealing
with less progressive parts of Europe. Tools and weapons are particu-
larly relevant in this context. Obsidian was used for knives, sickle-
teeth, and arrow-heads (including the transverse type). Fine hollow-
based specimens are found even in Late Minoan tombs. At least in
Early Minoan times stone was used even for axe-heads; notable is a
“jadeite” celt from the tholos of Kalathiana in the Mesara. But copper
was being used for celts even in the latest ‘'neolithic” phase1 2 and soon
ousted stone. Copper ore exists in East Crete3 and may have been
exploited in Early Minoan times. The addition of tin to copper to
1 Arch., LIX, and LXV, 1-94; Pendlebury, Crete, 195, 242, 306.
2 P. of M., II, 14.
3 Mosso, Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization (1910), 290.
27
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
facilitate casting is attested as early as M.M.I, though the standard
alloy containing 10 per cent of tin was not firmly established till
M.M.III. Bronze was known to the Sumerians before 2500 b.c. and
knowledge of its qualities was probably transmitted thence to the
iEgean via Anatolia (p. 38). But the Minoans’ demand for tin may
ultimately have been supplied from lodes in Etruria, Cornwall, or
Bohemia, since in each country we shall encounter ambiguous hints
of contact with the iEgean world (pp. 128, 241,336). Iron is represented
by a ring from a Middle Minoan tomb in the Mavro Speleo cemetery,
but was not used industrially before 1200 b.c.
Fig. 11. Minoan axes, axe-adzes and double axe ($), and seal impressions (|).
After Evans and M. A.
For axes the flat celt of the copper age did not lead, as in Cis-alpine
Europe, to flanged and socketed forms, but was superseded by the
shaft-hole axe (Fig. 11,1) that had been current from prehistoric times
in Mesopotamia. After Middle Minoan III the single-bladed axe was
ousted in Crete by the two-edged variety—the Double Axe—known
also to the Sumerians and elevated to become a fetish or symbol of
divine power by E.M.II. Double adzes too were used by the Knossian
workmen by the beginning of L.M.I.1 Finally, the axe-adze that may
be regarded as a combination of two types of axe used by the Sumerians
is represented by a gold model attributed to E.M.II2 and actual
specimens from the farmhouse at Chamaizi (Fig. 11, 3) attributed to
M.M.I and then the standard Minoan form (Fig. 11,4) from M.M.II on.
1 P. of M., II, 619, fig. 392. 2 P. of M., I, 193, n. 3.
28
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
Heavy perforated hammers of metal rectangular in cross-section are
reported as early as M.M.II1 and carpenters’ saws are attested as early
as wheeled vehicles, by M.M.I.1 2 But elongated flat celts served as
chisels and no sickles older than L.M.III3 survive.
Early Minoan daggers are triangular or provided with a very short
wide tang (Fig. 12, 1), and sometimes given longitudinal rigidity by
means of a midrib cast on both faces. They were attached with small
rivets, sometimes of silver, to their bone or wooden hilts that were
surmounted by globular or hemispherical pommels4 of stone or ivory,
Fig, 12. 1, Early Minoan daggers (J); 2, Stone beads (f). After Evans.
laterally perforated for transverse rivets to hold them in position.
During Middle Minoan times the blades, still either flat or strengthened
with a midrib, were elongated and assume an ogival form (Fig. 13).
Some have a flat tang, like Asiatic daggers, and the rivets are large.
But the palace of Mallia has yielded a genuine rapier, attributed to
M.M.I,5 which is shown by its elongated pommel and its attachment
to the hilt to be a development of the Sumerian series illustrated in
the Royal Tombs of Ur. And in M.M.III the great rapiers from the
Shaft Graves of Mycenae (Fig. 14, 1-3) are clearly elongations, to the
1 From Hagia Triada and Prisos.
2 P. of M., IV, 2, 797.
3 BSA, Palaikastro, pi. XXV; JRAI., LXXIV, 17.
* Xanthudides and Droop, pis. XXIII, LIV.
8 P. of M., II, 272; cf. Childe, NLMAE., pi. XXVIa.
29
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
surprising length of 93 cm., of the native types of Fig. 13. The pommels
are improvements on the Early Minoan form approximating to Fig. 21,3,
while the hilt-plate of type 1 preserves a reminiscence of the distinc-
Fig. 13. Middle Minoan I—II daggers (£). After Evans.
tively Egyptian crescentic gap. In L.M.Ib type 2 develops into the
rapier with horned guards (Fig. 14, 4), and then in L.M.III into a
short sword with flanges carried right round the hilt (Fig. 15, i).1 But
towards the close of the period a new type, adapted for cutting as well
as thrusting and apparently evolved beyond the Balkans, appears to
herald the collapse of jEgean civilization.
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