Perhaps the very latest view of sterling authority is that of Professor William Ridgeway,[d] who, after marshalling a vast amount of argument and induction based upon the extant and newly discovered relics of early Grecian civilisations, sums up his theories briefly and definitely. He accepts the existence of a “Pelasgian” race, which many have scouted, and credits it with the art-work and commerce revealed at Mycenæ and elsewhere and called “Mycenæan.” This was a dark-skinned (or melanochroöus) race which “had dwelt in Greece from a remote antiquity and had at all times, in spite of conquests, remained a chief element in the population of all Greece, whilst in Arcadia and Attica it had never been subjugated.” The Mycenæan civilisation had its origin, he believes, in the mainland of Greece and spread thence outwards to the isles of the Ægean, Crete, Egypt, and north to the Euxine. This Mycenæan era differs widely from the Homeric,--as in the treatment of the dead, and in the use of metals,--and preceded the Homeric by a great distance, the Mycenæan period belonging to the Bronze Age, the Homeric to the Iron Age. The Homeric people were not melanochroöus, but xanthochroöus (fair and blond), and were evidently a conquering race--the Achæans. These Achæans, according to Greek tradition, came from Epirus, and indeed a study of the relics and “the culture of the early Iron Age of Bosnia, Carniola, Styria, Salzburg, and upper Italy revealed armour, weapons, and ornaments exactly corresponding to those described in Homer. Moreover we found that a fair-haired race greater in stature than the melanochroöus Ægean people had there been domiciled for long ages, and that fresh bodies of tall, fair-haired people from the shores of the northern ocean continually through the ages had kept pressing down into the southern peninsulas. From this it followed that the Achæans of Homer were one of these bodies of Celts, who had made their way down into Greece and had become masters of the indigenous race.”