.. other men, and especially the Grecians, went, and
settled there.' As Mr. Hogarth has pointed out, 'the men of Praesos
were no doubt, in the true saga spirit, foreshortening history by
crystallizing a process into a single event.' It is very improbable,
in view of the evidence afforded by the long survival and gradual
decay of the Minoan tradition, that there was any immediate general
occupation of the island on the part of the conquering race. The
process which finally resulted in the island of Crete becoming
'the mixed land,' with a heterogeneous population of Pelasgians,
Dorians, Achaeans, and other tribes, must have been a gradual one,
extending, in all probability, over several centuries. Any large
influx of foreign elements was impossible so long as Crete was
dominated by a great and warlike central power; but once that power
was broken by the catastrophe in which the Palaces of Knossos and
Phaestos were overthrown, there was nothing to hinder the gradual
drifting in of the wandering tribes of the AEgean and of the North.
How that catastrophe came about we can see, not with any certainty
of detail, but with some amount of probability as to its general
outlines, from that echo of a period of wandering and strife in
the Mediterranean area which comes to us from the records of Ramses
III.
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