Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/133

CHAPTER II. THE STONE AGE. Why the Stone Age is represented in Greece by fewer monuments than in Northern Europe. Man is the same in every quarter of the globe ; his arts and industry have everywhere the like humble beginnings, no matter the degree of excellence to which they may ultimately attain. The picture which the name of Hellas is apt to call forth, when spoken, is a Hellas abounding in masterpieces, executed by a refined and well-informed art ; a noble architecture, to decorate which painter and sculptor joined hands. Nevertheless, like the nations of Central Europe, the Hellenes were ignorant, during a longer or shorter period, of the uses to which metals might be put, and the materials out of which they wrought their arms and implements were derived from bone, wood, and above all, the stone of their mountains. They too had a stone age. In the West, monuments of this period come out of the ground by thousands ; so that room can scarcely be found for them in our museums, which they are beginning to encumber. If in Greece they have only been pointed out within the last few years, and if very few specimens are seen in our collections, it is because until now nobody has cared about them. When the excavator tumbled about Grecian soil, what he hoped to discover, what he pursued with sustained zeal and enthusiasm in the depths of trenches he had opened, were small terra-cotta figures, painted vases, trinkets, and coins. He was far too much engrossed with these possible treasures, too obstinately bent on conquest of a particular kind, to heed rude tools which the eye singled out with difficulty from undressed stone. Yet had he chanced to descry