ition-walls to suit their smaller
needs. An age of transition succeeded, during which the character
of the Cretan population was gradually modified by successive waves
of invasion from the mainland, until Crete assumed the guise of
'the mixed land,' under which Homer knew it; and finally came the
great invasion of the Dorians, which brought in for Crete, as for
the rest of Greece, the dark age which preceded the dawn of the
true Hellenic culture.

CHAPTER X

LIFE UNDER THE SEA-KINGS

What manner of men were the people who developed the Bronze Age
civilization of Crete? Can we form any idea of their physical
characteristics, of their homes and social conditions, of the general
aspect of their daily life, and of the occupations in which they
were engaged? Such questions can only be answered more or less
generally in the absence of written material, or, rather, in our
lack of understanding of the written material that exists; but,
still, a considerable mass of evidence is in existence from which
some broad outlines may be deduced with moderate certainty, and
the object of this chapter is to present these outlines.

First, as to the physical characteristics of the race. Two lines
of evidence are here available. On the one hand, there is that
afforded by the actual remains of the bodies of men and women of
the Minoan race which have been exhumed from ossuaries of the Bronze
Age, and studied by anthropologists. Generally speaking, the result
of their investigations has been to show that the Minoans belonged
to the southernmost of the three great racial belts into which
the ancient peoples of Europe may be divided--the so-called
Mediterranean race. That is to say, they were a people of the
long-headed type, dark in colouring and small in stature. The average
height, estimated from the bones which have been measured, is somewhat
under 5 feet 4 inches, which is about 2 inches less than the average
of the modern Cretans, and corresponds more to the stature of the
Sardinians and Sicilians of the present time. A few skulls of the
broad-headed type appear among the general long-headedness, and
probably point to some intermixture of race; but, as a whole, the
people were long-headed. The shortness of stature indicated by the
bones is a feature which one would scarcely have inferred from
the other line of evidence available--the actual representations
of men and women of their own race which the Minoans have left in
their