Finally, about 1000 <small>B.C.</small>, the palace at Cnossus was again destroyed, never again to be rebuilt; and at the same time the “Bronze Age” of Minoan and Mycenæan civilisation came to an end. It fell before a nation, barbarous, but possessed of iron weapons; probably the tribes which later Greek tradition and Homer knew as Dorians. Then followed a period of several centuries of unrest, as, successively, Achaæn, Æolian, and Doric migrations came from the North through the mainland of Greece and the islands of the Ægean, while an Ionian migration from Armenia spread to the west shore of Asia Minor. Finally, when the Ægean area emerges into history, it is dominated by Hellenes. The Ægean Archipelago has been called the ancient bridge between the civilisations of the East and West, and the imagination pictures Crete at the southern end of it, within easy distance of three continents and engaged in peaceful intercourse with all; the head of a maritime confederacy of sea-rovers who planted their trading stations throughout the Mediterranean, their art everywhere following their trade. She herself was protected from aggression by her island walls; while the outposts of culture on the mainland of Greece--Mycenæ and Tiryns--were compelled to erect their palaces within citadels. From the fact that no remains of Minoan and Mycenæan temples have been found, but only shrines within the precincts of the palaces, it has been concluded that, as in Assyria and Babylonia, the monarchs were also priests. Evidence points to the principal Minoan divinity being a kind of Earth Mother, who was associated with a satellite god. One part of her religious attributes survived in the later Aphrodite, the other in Rhea, the mother of the Olympian Zeus. While images of the deity were made as early as 2000 <small>B.C.</small> the principal objects of worship, or fetishes, in the Minoan age were natural objects: rocks and mountain peaks, trees, and curiously shaped stones, and even artificial pillars of wood and stone. Sometimes, as in the famous instance of the Lion Gate at Mycenæ, the fetish object--here a pillar--was guarded by animals.