Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/539

Rh would seem to point to a very remote period; there is no trace of foreign importation, the potter's wheel and the use of metals, except as the crudest form of ornament, are equally unknown, the knives being of obsidian; all this would agree with the conditions of the end of the Stone Age. Here, however, we are met by the obvious and ever- recurring difficulty of deciding between the primitive and the savage. It is conceivable, of course, that in some of these islands unvisited by external influences the use of obsidian knives and primitive ornament may have continued on, belated, as it were, in the general advance of their fellows. But if we may, as seems possible, assume a homogeneous population with close intercourse amongst each other, it is natural to expect an advance pari passu over all alike. Now we have at Hissarlik several strata of civilisation superimposed, and this is the lowest; and at Cyprus, where remains of all times are found, the same fact is confirmed. This then seems certain, that at a remote date, before Mycenæ, before any introduction of the foreign element into Greece, this race held a considerable part of the islands, and probably of the Asiatic coast of the Ægæan.

The burial customs of this people are as completely a riddle as their origin and date: so far as has been yet discovered, they seem to offer absolutely no relation to the Greek customs of later times. The best representative series have been obtained in excavations at Oliaros (Antiparos) by Bent, and at Amorgos, in both of which places the graves, partly extending under the sea, are astonishingly numerous. At Oliaros, which seems only mentioned by Heraclides of Pontus, as a "Sidonian" colony, Mr. Bent found no trace of historic remains; here the graves, usually of rough earthenware slabs placed box fashion for the poorer, and of marble slabs for the richer, were of irregular design, oblong, triangular, and square,