When Knossos fell, Crete ceased to be the pre-eminent power in the Near East. The island itself was overrun by military or naval adventurers, and the centre of Mediterranean life shifted over to the mainland of Greece, whence, indeed, those adventurers came. The interesting thing, however, was that Cretan culture went with it, and neither for the last, nor probably for the first, time “the captive led captive her savage conqueror,” as Horace wrote centuries afterwards. Crete stooped to conquer Greece, just as Greece in her turn stooped to conquer Rome.

The Cretans as a race were quite distinct from the contemporary inhabitants of Greece, physical types being sharply divided by the shores of the mainland. It may be asked: Is it worth while speculating about the physical characteristics of a people which flourished 4,000 years ago, whose very existence was obscured by the Dark Age that comes before Greek history, and whose existence was not rediscovered until the other day? Yet archæology works wonders. It is true that in this particular field, in which archæology is chiefly dependent upon portrait-paintings and bones, there is more controversy and less certitude than in the others; and that craniology, or the study of skulls, with their much-disputed classification into “brachycephalic” or broad-headed, “dolichocephalic” or long-headed, and “mesocephalic,” midway between the two, is a fruitful source of confusion; that the “cephalic” index—that is, the breadth of the skull above the ears expressed in a percentage which gives the proportion of this breadth-measurement to the measurement of the length of the same skull from the forehead to the occiput—is a poor index of anything at all. Still, there is ground for assuming that from the later Stone Age onwards the islands of the Ægean were mainly peopled by members of the “Mediterranean” race, small of stature, with oval faces, with what craniologists might call rather “long” heads, with small hands and feet, a dark complexion, dark eyes and black curly hair.

According to Professor H. L. Myres in his Dawn of History, the north-west quadrant of the Old World resolved itself racially into three belts, which were determined by geographical conditions. (Pp. 30 et seq. Williams & Norgate, 1912.) In the north were the pure white-skinned “Boreal” men of the Baltic basin; next came the sallow “Alpine” type, then the red-skinned “Mediterranean” man. The third was an intruder from the South, not from far enough south for him to be a negro, but probably from the northern shores of Africa. His intrusion “formed part of a much larger convergence of animals and plants from the south and south-east into the colder, moister regions which have been released since the Ice Age closed.” The limit of the movement seems to have been fixed by the shores of the mainland, further north than which the lungs and constitution of the people concerned forbade them to go.

The establishment of the existence of the Mediterranean race has had, among other results, that of making it no longer possible, as was invariably the practice before Crete was excavated, of ascribing all obscure factors in the beginnings of Greece to a Phœnician origin. We now know, for instance, that the art of writing came from Crete, Phœnicia being the medium; and that Phœnicia itself was merely a late centre of the general Ægean civilization, and got its name merely because it was the best-known branch of the “red-skinned” race; for “Phœnikes” literally means “Red-skins,” and in Homer Phœnix himself is a King of Crete and grandfather of Minos.

The Minoan people, then, formed part of the Mediterranean race. Their dress was much simpler than that of the classical Greeks. The men wore a short pair of drawers or a loin-cloth, the upper part of the body being bare, as in the cupbearer picture, a style emanating, as did the men themselves, from the warm lands south of the Mediterranean. Egyptian fresco-paintings reveal an almost exact analogy of type in the clothing and appearance of the Egyptians. Those who have a keen eye for the persistence of type may compare some of the forms of loin-cloth, as depicted on seal stones, with the “brakais,” or baggy breeches, still worn in Crete. Elders and officials apparently wore flowing cloaks for their greater dignity. High-topped boots—again suggestive of those worn to-day—were in general use. Men wore their hair long as did the women, plaited and coiled up on the top of the head, thereby forming the only headdress that was used.

Minoan war-equipment was limited. Their only weapons were a long sword and a dagger, the latter of which is shown by pictures of clay figurines to have been carried inside the belt at the front. Their only defensive armour was a big shield of leather and a leather conical helmet. The shield was framed in a metal band, but had no handle or central boss; it was big enough to cover the body from head to foot, and it could be bent so as to protect both sides. It is represented in certain pictures in a curious 8-shape, pinched-in in the middle. The origin of this may have been that it was the practice to sling it over the left shoulder suspended by a strap, and for this purpose the figure-of-eight shape may have been convenient.

Horses were apparently used both for war and for hunting, although we have no pictures of them being ridden. The available evidence shows them only in the shafts of two-wheeled chariots. This accords well with Professor Sir William Ridgeway’s observation (made far back in the ’eighties of last century) that in Homer the horse was driven only, and was no bigger than our donkey. There is reason for thinking that the horses were imported, and imaginative people have recognized evidence of this in the fact that a seal stone has been found which shows a horse on board ship. Whether intentionally or merely from crudity of draughtsmanship, one is left in little doubt as to what mostly occupied the artist’s mind when he fashioned this stone, for the horse covers three-quarters of the ship’s length, and towers high above it, while the crew stand as high as the horse’s knees. On the fascinating subject of the history of the horse, the reader should consult Sir W. Ridgeway’s Origin of the Thoroughbred Horse (Cambridge University Press, 1905).

The women are readily distinguishable from the men in Cretan pictures by reason of their white skin, suggestive of a more secluded indoor life. They wore large shady hats, close-fitting, puffed-sleeved blouses, cut very low in front, and projecting upwards into a sort of peak at the back of the neck. They wore wide-flounced, richly-embroidered skirts like crinolines, and had belts like the men’s. It was on first seeing some of the pictures of them that a French scholar compared the women of Knossos with those of Paris.

Minoan women enjoyed a far more “advanced” status than did other primitive women. In the art of their day they are represented as appearing in public and unveiled; they took part in the bull-fighting at Knossos, and their apartments in the palace were marked out by their special luxury. The greatest glory for an Athenian woman of a later age was to be “as little mentioned as possible among men.” Not so for the women of Crete. There may be some special significance in the fact that the Lycians of Asia Minor, who were colonists from Crete, made a practice of calling children by the mother’s, not the father’s, name (Herodotus, i. 73). If this was the case also in Minoan Crete itself, it may afford a possible explanation of the freedom enjoyed by Cretan women, for the practice of naming children after their mother instead of after their father is connected with states of society which have not yet evolved any definite ideas of marriage, and in which, as Herbert Spencer says, “The connection between mother and child is always certain, whereas the connection between father and child would sometimes be only inferable.”