Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/501

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The history of Greece began, according to Grote, in B.C. 776; and in the days of Homer, who is stated by Herodotus to have lived B.C. 880, the Greeks possessed no money, were ignorant of the art of writing, and were acquainted only with the western parts of the Mediterranean. In the Homeric times iron was beginning to be used in place of bronze, and both materials were employed for weapons. The influence exerted by the early Greeks on the nations of the north and west was principally from the colonies on the north of the Black Sea, and from that of Massilia.

The Greek colonists, who introduced their arts and civilisation into the district north of Pontus, gradually pushed their discoveries farther and farther to the north-east, and ultimately arrived by a new route at Samland. They started from Olbia, at the mouth of the river Bug, passed up the Dnieper, and thence in a north- westerly direction, so as to avoid the huge morasses which bordered most of the rivers traversing these great plains, made for the line of the Lower Vistula, and joined the main line of commerce from the Hadriatic Sea. The rivers also were a means of communication, as well as the roads through the forests, which are marked by the numerous tumuli and many traces of old occupation between Kiew and the Lower Vistula (see Fig. 168, Route III.)