Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/135

 114 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. activity in these vast regions, we are even now in a position to note and count the stages of their industrial advance ; divine the order in which inventions and improvements of a practical nature succeeded each other, enabling these nations to attain a certain measure of culture, even before they had dealings with the Oriental and the Graeco- Roman worlds. Leaving aside lacunae and debatable points which, as remarked somewhat earlier, still exist, we shall find that experts, regarding solely the main lines and broad divisions, on the whole are at one in their conclusions. In this evolution, which must have covered thousands of years, they all distinguish two periods, which they call paleothic and neolithic, terms which exactly explain the meaning attached to the words.^ The paleothic epoch is characterized in the West, in France and England for example, by rude flint tools that are found in ancient alluvial soils, on table-lands, and the breccia of caves where flint or bone implements of this class already show more finish, and are sometimes incised with peculiar designs. In Greece, alluvial deposits do not apparently contain flint implements akin to those of St. Acheul and Chelles, nor have caves as yet been discovered containing remains of stone and bone furniture, from which it might be inferred that they were inhabited during the primitive period, answering to those which came out of the grottoes of P^rigord and other subterranean shelters in various French districts ; nevertheless, in localities without number of the Hellenic peninsula, were collected objects of obsidian, blades, nuclei, arrow-heads, etc. They would almost tempt one to com- pare them with the flints of our diluvium and caves, — for like these they are unpolished and rudely cut — but for the fact that generally they are discovered in beds which for other reasons are held to have been formed within comparatively recent times. ^ MoRTiLLET, Le prehistorique, Antiquite de Phomme ; De Nadaillac, Mosurs et monuments des peuples prkhistoriques, G. Masson {Bibliothhque de la nature)] Salomon Reinach, Antiquites nationales, description raisonnie du musee de Saint-Germain-en- Laye: I. Epoque des alluvions et des cavemes. This work, whose first volume exclusively deals with the paleothic age, will almost render unnecessary older books on the subject, in that they are all critically and precisely summed up in it ; at the same time, the bibliography is as complete, the illustrations as satisfactory as could be desired. In these studies M. Reinach brings to bear the severe method which he has learnt by long experience in the school of philology and classic archaeology, the want of which is very apparent with his predecessors.