it as a native development, not
a transplantation of Egyptian culture. Its ruins show it gradually
emerging from the Neolithic stage about 4000 B.C., when Egyptian
commerce was well developed in its seas. Somewhere about 2500 B.C.
the whole of the islands seem to have been brought under the Cretan
monarchy, and the concentration of wealth and power led to a remarkable
artistic development, on native lines. We find in Crete the remains of
splendid palaces, with advanced sanitary systems and a great luxuriance
of ornamentation. It was this civilisation which founded the centre
at Mycenae, on the Greek mainland, about the middle of the second
millennium B.C.

But our inquiry into the origin of European civilisation does not
demand any extensive description of the AEgean culture and its Mycenaean
offshoot. It was utterly destroyed between 1500 and 1000 B.C., and
this was probably done by the Aryan ancestors of the later Greeks or
Hellenes. About the time when one branch of the Aryans was descending
upon India and another preparing to rival decaying Babylonia, the third
branch overran Europe. It seems to have been a branch of these that
swept down the Greek peninsula, and crossed the sea to sack and destroy
the centres of AEgean culture. Another branch poured down the Italian
peninsula; another settled in the region of the Baltic, and would prove
the source of the Germanic nations; another, the Celtic, advanced to the
west of Europe. The mingling of this semi-barbaric population with
the earlier inhabitants provided the material of the nations of modern
Europe. Our last page in the story of the earth must be a short account
of its civilisation.

The first branch to become civilised, and to carry culture to a greater
height than the older nations had ever done, was the Hellenes. There is
no need for us to speculate on the "genius" of the Hellenes, or even
to enlarge on the natural advantages of the lower part of the peninsula
which they occupied. A glance at the map will explain why European
civilisation began in Greece. The Hellenes had penetrated the region
in which there was constant contact with all the varied cultures of the
older world. Although they destroyed the AEgean culture, they could not
live amidst its ruins without receiving some influence. Then the traders
of Phoenicia, triumphing in the fall of their AEgean rivals, brought the
great pacific cultural influence of commerce to bear on them. After
some hundred