Most Ancient Aryan Society

Author(s): Ram Chandra Jain
Publisher: Institute of Bharatalogical Research Sriganganagar Rajasthan

Page 92

8. THE PRE-OLYMPIAN ÆGEAN SOCIETY
The fourth great culture of the region was the maritime Ægean culture having its seat of power in the island of
Crete and spread over far and wide in the Ægean Culture
* Cyclades and the Greek Mainland. The neolithic phase was succeeded by the Minoan civilization in Crete. The Minoan metal age explicitly shows Asiatic traits. Some indeed might have been transmitted via Egypt but the Minoan metallurgy is based entirely in Asiatic traditions. The Egyptian and the Anatolian influences joined together in creating the Minoan civilization. But the Minoan civilization was not brought ready made from Asia nor from Africa, but was an original native creation wherein Sumerian and Egyptian techniques and ideas were blended' to form a novel local civilization.
This culture intruded into Greece from Western Asia and North Africa Circa 3000 B. C. Herodotus informs us Original Earliest that in the pre-Hellenic times, the PhoeniImmigrants cians, who originally came from the coasts of the Indian Ocean, carried on maritime trade in the Mediterranean and were settled on the coastal port-cities of Palestine. Loaded with Egyptian and Assyrian goods, they called at various places along the coast, including Argos, in those days, the most important of the countires*; which afterwards came to be known by the name of Greece. He narrates an incident of the abduction of a king's daughter in the fifteenth century B. C. It appears that the Paņis of Bhārata, who colonised Egypt and Sumer, extended their exploits to the Mediterranean and took Sumerian and Egyptian cultures in that region Circa 3000 B. C. Paņis conti