Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/134

 The Stone Age in Greece. 113 them, it is doubtful whether he would have stooped to pick them up. Nevertheless, there are valid reasons which render these instances of human industry highly interesting. Until proof is shown to the contrary, we are bound to recog- nize in the folk who fashioned them the direct ancestors of the Greeks of history ; the impulse whose first awakening we grasp here, is parent to the thought which in the days to come will have as its expounders Plato and Aristotle ; whilst the hand which slowly polished these flint and diorite pieces, is the same which will carve in Parian marble the Hermes of Olympia, the Venus of Milo. Since they bethought them of looking for evidences in this particular domain of man's earliest effort to emerge from bar- barism, a considerable number of specimens has certainly been found in Asia Minor, the Archipelago, and continental Greece ; but however far-reaching these investigations may be in the future, their chance of being as productive as in the West, or that the museum at Athens will ever show series to be compared, either in wealth or extent, to those deposited in the St. Germain Museum, is very poor indeed. The reason of its being so has been shown in our opening chapters ; we said that ere the burden was laid upon the Hellenic tribes to correct and master, by sheer ingenuity, patience, and skill, the defects of materials, here untract- able, there too soft and brittle, the examples and imports of the stranger had opened up to them novel and easier paths, of which they eagerly availed themselves. The stone age was here much shorter than in Central Europe, and in consequence of it far less productive ; in this direction its labours fall immeasurably below the jade axes and sticks of command, as they are called, of the inhabitants of our cave and lake-dwellings, polished with mar- vellous care, and ornamented with designs both spirited, correct, and of rare elegance. The science which deals with prehistoric antiquities had its being in countries washed by the Atlantic and North Sea, where the number and variety of objects permitted of such comparisons and observations being made, which in the end shed some rays of light into the undetermined depths of that dim and distant past. If, in the complete absence of dates, written testimony, or oral tradition, there can be no question of reconstructing the history of tribes which have left traces of their existence and arduous VOL. I. I