The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

io8 THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
accompanied perhaps by a faithful henchman, should have found it possible to establish
themselves as kings over the trading cities of Mycenean Greece.
But let us glance for a moment at these trading cities and their inhabitants.
The original people of the Greek mainland, hke the bulk of the present population, seem
to have been of that eastern Alpine or Dinaric type, scarcely distinguishable from the
bulk of the population of Asia Minor. These are tall dark people, with small but broad
heads, which are very high and somewhat conical at the top, though sometimes the
excessively flattened occiput gives the impression that the head has been sliced from
the top of the forehead to the back of the neck. As far as one can judge from the
available evidence, these were the only inhabitants of the bulk of the peninsula, until
coastal settlements were made by the Cretans, some in the second Middle Minoan period,
but most of them at the beginning of the Late Minoan."
The original inhabitants of Crete seem to have been typical members of the
Mediterranean race, but during Early Minoan times we find a few broad-headed people
arriving in the east of the island, and gradually speading over the eastern half." It
has been taken for granted, quite naturally, that this broad-headed infusion came
from Asia Minor, the population of which at that time must have been exclusively
broad-headed. But about the time that these broad-heads appear in Crete we find
evidence in the island of the development of the copper mines at Gournia," and of
the accumulation of gold ornaments, such as the treasure of Mochlos.'^ There are
also signs of the existence of an oversea commerce and of a trade in olive oil with
Egypt."^
This leads us to wonder whether these broad-heads belonged to wanderers from
Anatoha, or whether it is not more probable that here we have evidence of the arrival
of the Prospectors, who seem always to be the organisers of oversea trade and of mining
operations. We must remember too, that by 2800 B.C., not long after the beginning
of the Early Minoan period, the Sumerians were trading in the Mediterranean, and
knew, if they had not already settled in, Crete.''
10 Peake (1916) 1. 158, 159. '3 Seager (1912) 104-106.
" Hawes (1909) 23-25. m Gardiner (1909) 32 ; (1914) 32.
" Boyd and Hawes (1912). 'J Vid. supr. p. 22.