The island of Thera may be described as a sort of prehistoric Pompeii buried under volcanic deposits, which have completely transformed the configuration of the island. The results of preliminary excavations by the French in 1866 showed that the cataclysm which overwhelmed the island must (on geological grounds) have taken place about the twentieth century B.C., and that the remains of pottery must be anterior to this event.[876] Herodotos[877] states that Kadmos founded a settlement in the fourteenth century, and the Minyae again about the twelfth, and the island must have been uninhabitable for a long time previously. The houses and other remains of civilisation discovered below the volcanic deposits show an advance on Hissarlik (second city) and the earliest Cypriote culture, and the pottery is no exception. The vases are wheel-made, fired at a moderate heat in closed furnaces (sometimes baked in the sun), and plastic forms are almost wanting.[878] Many are pierced with holes in the bottom, for what purpose is not known. They were often found _in situ_, mixed with stone implements, and with evidence of having contained grain. The forms are very regular, a cylindrical shape being specially affected, and they are made of a badly levigated clay, covered with a greyish slip, on which the patterns are laid in _matt_ colours—white, black, or red—without any incised markings. [Illustration: From _Baumeister_. FIG. 81. VASES FROM THERA. ] M. Dumont distinguishes four varieties of ornament: simple patterns, such as bands, hatchings, and dots; volutes, wave-patterns, and intersecting circles; vegetable motives, such as long narrow leaves or flowers; and animals, including deer, and ducks or swans. Generally there is a strong predilection for vegetable motives, and in this naturalistic tendency we may see the prelude to the Mycenaean period. Among those now at the French School at Athens, which has the best collection, are several interesting examples illustrated in Fig. 81.[879] One is a trefoil-mouthed jug with running quadrupeds in black, and red bands, on a grey ground; another jug is painted with birds in black, the details in red and white. A sort of cream-jug is decorated with water-plant patterns; a cylindrical jar with oblique wreaths; and a dish with seaweed. A funnel-shaped vase and a beak-mouthed jug are obvious prototypes of Mycenaean forms.