But the conventionalized pictography of Crete, if it does not give us the actual source of the later Phoenician letters, at least supplies the best illustration of the elements out of which it was evolved. And it will be seen, from what has been already said, that the more primitive field of pictography, out of which this conventionalized Cretan system arose, is itself only a branch of a widely diffused European family of picture-writing, of which the records can be traced from Lapland to the Straits of Gibraltar, and from the Atlantic to the Aegean, and which finds again its continuation on the African and the Asiatic side. There seems to be a kind of hazy notion that though an elaborate system of pictography may have been current among the American Indians, for example, the alphabet, or for that matter the Cretan script, came to Greece as a kind of gift of the gods, and was taken over by a population that had no graphic means of communication. It is true that the earlier records of such, owing to their having been largely on perishable materials, such as bark or hides, may in many cases be irrecoverable. But we may be sure that they existed throughout the Aegean lands, as elsewhere. Nay, it was because they not only existed, but had already reached a comparatively advanced stage, that the acceptation of such a highly developed system of writing as that of the Phoenician alphabet was rendered possible. Even the forms of the letters must themselves have been largely familiar, since, as we have seen, the use of the linearized signs of the purest alphabetiform character goes back to what in many respects must be regarded as another world, and to a time, it may be, when articulate language was itself but imperfectly developed. FOOTNOTES: [1] I may refer to my forthcoming publication, _Scripta Minoa_, Clarendon Press, Oxford. [2] ‘Exemples de figures dégénérées et stylisées à l’époque du Renne.’ (_Congrès International d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie préhistoriques_, 1906. Compte Rendu, t. i, pp. 394 seqq.) [3] ‘L’Évolution de l’Art Pariétal des Cavernes de l’Âge du Renne.’ (_C.r. du Congrès d’Anthropologie, etc._, 1906, t. i, pp. 367 seqq.) Fig. 3 is taken from this (p. 370, Fig. 120). [4] E. Cartailhac et l’Abbé H. Breuil, ‘Les peintures et gravures murales des Cavernes Pyrénéennes, II. Marsoulas.’ _Anthropologie_, xvi (1905), pp. 431 seqq. Fig. 4 is taken from p. 438, Fig. 8. [5] Alcalde del Rio, _Las Pinturas y Grabados de las Cavernas prehistóricas de la Provincia de Santander_, 1906. Fig. 5 is taken from _Anthropologie_, xvii (1906), p. 145, Fig. 3. [6] E. Piette, ‘Les Écritures de l’Âge glyptique.’ _Anthropologie_, xvi, p. 8, Fig. 9. [7] _Reliquiae Aquitanicae_, B, Pl. XXVI, Fig. 10. [8] Op. cit., p. 9. [9] See R. Verneau, ‘L’Anthropologie des Grottes de Grimaldi.’ (_Congrès International d’Anthropologie, etc._, 1906, pp. 114 seqq.)