Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/35

Rh Of the people who lived of old in the lands afterwards occupied by the Hellenes we have no literary record. The spade of the excavator is our only resource. Arms, ornaments, painted pottery, sculptured stone, and mason's work are thus brought to light which reveal something of the habits and skill of an ancient people and its connection with races living in other countries. We learn something of the metals which they used, of the houses or fortresses which they built, of their methods of disposing of the dead, and of what they thought of the life after death.

As the most numerous examples of such things have been discovered at Mycenae and Tiryns in Argolis, it has been agreed to speak of this stage of civilisation