The accumulations of prehistoric objects on these sites all tell the same tale, the influence of the East, and more especially of the Phoenicians, upon the growing civilization of early Greece. Thus in Thera, where a sort of Greek Pompeii has been preserved under the lava which once overwhelmed it, we find the rude stone hovels of its primitive inhabitants, with roofs of wild olive, filled with the bones of dogs and sheep, and containing stores of barley, spelt, and chickpea, copper and stone weapons, and abundance of pottery. The latter is for the most part extremely coarse, but here and there have been discovered vases of artistic workmanship, which remind us of those carried by the Kefa, and may have been imported from abroad. We know from the tombs found on the island that the Phoenicians afterwards settled in Thera among a population in the same condition of civilization as that which had been overtaken by the great volcanic eruption. It was from these Phoenician settlers that the embroidered dresses known as Theraean were brought to Greece; they were adorned with animals and other figures, similar to those seen upon Corinthian or Phoeniko-Greek ware. Now M. Fr. Lenormant has pointed out that much of the pottery used by the aboriginal inhabitants of Thera is almost identical in form and make with that found by Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik, in the Troad, and he concludes that it must belong to the same period and the same area of civilization. There is as yet little, if any, trace of Oriental influence; a few of the clay vases from Thera, and some of the gold workmanship at Hissarlik, can alone be referred, with more or less hesitation, to Phoenician artists. We have not yet reached the age when Phoenician trade in the West ceased to be the sporadic effort of private individuals, and when trading colonies were established in different parts of the Greek world; Europe is still unaffected by Eastern culture, and the beginnings of Greek art are still free from foreign interference. It is only in certain designs on the terra-cotta discs, believed by Dr. Schliemann to be spindle-whorls, that we may possibly detect rude copies of Babylonian and Phoenician intaglios.