identified with those of any other art known to exist.
To what race of men were the achievements of this early culture
to be ascribed, and what relation did they hold to the Hellenes
of history?

The work of Schliemann was continued and extended by successors
such as Doerpfeld, Tsountas, Mackenzie, and others, and by the end
of the nineteenth century it had become apparent that the culture
of which the first important traces had been found at Mycenae had
extended to some extent over all Hellas, but chiefly over the
south-eastern portion of the mainland and over the Cyclades. The
principal find-spots in Greece proper were in the Argolid and in
Attica; but, besides these, abundant material was discovered at
Enkomi (Cyprus) and at Phylakopi (Melos), while from Vaphio, near
Amyklae in Laconia, there came, among other treasures, a pair of
most wonderful gold cups, whose workmanship surpassed anything
that could have been imagined of such an early period, and is only
to be matched by the goldsmith work of the Renaissance. Hissarlik,
under Dr. Doerpfeld's hands, yielded from the Sixth City the evidence
of an Asiatic civilization truly contemporaneous with that of Mycenae.
Even before the end of the century it became apparent that Crete was
destined to prove a focus of this early culture, and the promise, as
we shall see later, has been more than fulfilled. In Egypt Professor
Petrie found deposits of prehistoric AEgean pottery in the Delta, the
Fayum, and even in Middle Egypt, proving that this civilization,
whatever its origin, had been in contact with the ancient civilization
of the Nile Valley, while even in the Western Mediterranean, in
Sicily particularly, in Italy, Sardinia, and Spain, finds, less
plentiful, but quite unmistakable, bore witness to the wide diffusion
of Mycenaean culture.

Roughly, the result came to this: 'that before the epoch at which
we are used to place the beginnings of Greek civilization--that is,
the opening centuries of the last millennial period B.C.--we must
allow for an immensely long record of human artistic productivity,
going back into the Neolithic Age, and culminating towards the close
of the age of Bronze in a culture more fecund and more refined
than any we are to find again in the same lands till the age of
Iron was far advanced. Man in Hellas was more highly civilized
before history than when history begins to record his state; and
there existed human society in the Hellenic area, o