Their main region was Cappadocia,
where, at least as far back as 1500 B.C., they developed so
characteristic a civilisation, that its documents or inscriptions
are almost undecipherable. They at one time overran the whole of
Asia Minor. Other peoples such as the Elamites, represent similar
offshoots of the fermenting culture of the region. The Hebrews
were probably a small and unimportant group, settled close round
Jerusalem, until a few centuries before the Christian Era. They
then assimilated the culture of the more powerful nations which
crossed and recrossed their territory. The Persians were, as we
saw, a branch of the Aryan family which slowly advanced between
1500 and 700 B.C., and then inherited the empire of dying
Babylon.
The most interesting, and one of the most recently discovered, of
these older civilisations, was the AEgean. Its chief centre was
Crete, but it spread over many of the neighbouring islands. Its
art and its script are so distinctive that we must recognise it
as a native development, not a transplantation of Egyptian
culture. Its ruins show it gradually emerging from the Neolithic
stage about 4000 B.C., when Egyptian commerce was well developed
in its seas.
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