Somewhere about 2500 B.C. the whole of the islands
seem to have been brought under the Cretan monarchy, and the
concentration of wealth and power led to a remarkable artistic
development, on native lines. We find in Crete the remains of
splendid palaces, with advanced sanitary systems and a great
luxuriance of ornamentation. It was this civilisation which
founded the centre at Mycenae, on the Greek mainland, about the
middle of the second millennium B.C.
But our inquiry into the origin of European civilisation does not
demand any extensive description of the AEgean culture and its
Mycenaean offshoot. It was utterly destroyed between 1500 and
1000 B.C., and this was probably done by the Aryan ancestors of
the later Greeks or Hellenes. About the time when one branch of
the Aryans was descending upon India and another preparing to
rival decaying Babylonia, the third branch overran Europe. It
seems to have been a branch of these that swept down the Greek
peninsula, and crossed the sea to sack and destroy the centres of
AEgean culture. Another branch poured down the Italian peninsula;
another settled in the region of the Baltic, and would prove the
source of the Germanic nations; another, the Celtic, advanced to
the west of Europe.
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