On the whole, whatever their later story, the truth about the Mushki, who came down into Syria early in the twelfth century and retired to Cappadocia some fifty years later after crossing swords with Assyria, is probably this--that they were originally a mountain people from northern Armenia or the Caucasus, distinct from the Hatti, and that, having descended from the north-east in a primitive nomadic state into the seat of an old culture possessed by an enfeebled race, they adopted the latter's civilization as they conquered it and settled down. But probably they did not fix themselves definitely in Cappadocia till the blow struck by Tiglath Pileser had checked their lust of movement and weakened their confidence of victory. In any case, the northern storms had subsided by 1000 B.C., leaving Asia Minor, Armenia and Syria parcelled among many princes. SECTION 6. ASIA MINOR Had one taken ship with Achaeans or Ionians for the western coast of Anatolia in the year 1000, one would have expected to disembark at or near some infant settlement of men, not natives by extraction, but newly come from the sea and speaking Greek or another Aegean tongue. These men had ventured so far to seize the rich lands at the mouths of the long Anatolian valleys, from which their roving forefathers had been almost entirely debarred by the provincial forces of some inland power, presumably the Hatti Empire of Cappadocia. In earlier days the Cretans, or their kin of Mycenaean Greece in the latest Aegean age, had been able to plant no more than a few inconsiderable colonies of traders on Anatolian shores. Now, however, their descendants were being steadily reinforced from the west by members of a younger Aryan race, who mixed with the natives of the coast, and gradually mastered or drove them inland. Inconsiderable as this European soakage into the fringe of the neighbouring continent must have seemed at that moment, we know that it was inaugurating a process which ultimately would affect profoundly all the history of Hither Asia. That Greek Ionian colonization first attracts notice round about 1000 B.C. marks the period as a cardinal point in history. We cannot say for certain, with our present knowledge, that any one of the famous Greek cities had already begun to grow on the Anatolian coasts. There is better evidence for the so early existence of Miletus, where the German excavators have found much pottery of the latest Aegean age, than of any other. But, at least, it is probable that Greeks were already settled on the sites of Cnidus, Teos, Smyrna, Colophon, Phocea, Cyme and many more; while the greater islands Rhodes, Samos, Chios and Mitylene had apparently received western settlers several generations ago, perhaps before even the first Achaean raids into Asia.