Abstract
THE oldest European civilisation was born in Crete and spread thence throughout the Ægean basin. In the discovery and re-creation of this civilisation, Englishmen and Americans have taken the lead. Yet, curiously enough, no really complete and well-documented account of it has been available in English. The translation of Prof. Glotz's French work by Messrs. Dobie and Riley therefore fills a real gap. Glotz evokes a vivid picture of Minoan life in all its aspects—social, industrial, commercial, religious and æsthetic. Incidentally he shows how the Greeks, and so the whole western world, were indebted to their prehistoric forerunners: Cretan enterprise discovered the routes to the Euxine, to Asia Minor, to Sicily and to Italy that Hellenic traders and colonists followed; the olive and the fig were cultivated in the great island long before the northerners reached the Ægean; the athletic contests and dances which played such a prominent part in Hellenic life had roots in the Minoan age, and, long before Terpander and the Phrygians, the notes of the seven-stringed lyre and the flute had resounded in the halls of Hagia Triada.
The Ægean Civilisation.
By Prof. Gustave Glotz. (The History of Civilisation Series.) Pp. xvi + 422 + 4 plates. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd.; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925.) 16s. net.
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CHILDE, V. The Ægean Civilisation . Nature 117, 716 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/117716a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/117716a0
