The Cretans as a race were quite distinct from the contemporary inhabitants of Greece, physical types being sharply divided by the shores of the mainland. It may be asked: Is it worth while speculating about the physical characteristics of a people which flourished 4,000 years ago, whose very existence was obscured by the Dark Age that comes before Greek history, and whose existence was not rediscovered until the other day? Yet archæology works wonders. It is true that in this particular field, in which archæology is chiefly dependent upon portrait-paintings and bones, there is more controversy and less certitude than in the others; and that craniology, or the study of skulls, with their much-disputed classification into “brachycephalic” or broad-headed, “dolichocephalic” or long-headed, and “mesocephalic,” midway between the two, is a fruitful source of confusion; that the “cephalic” index--that is, the breadth of the skull above the ears expressed in a percentage which gives the proportion of this breadth-measurement to the measurement of the length of the same skull from the forehead to the occiput--is a poor index of anything at all. Still, there is ground for assuming that from the later Stone Age onwards the islands of the Ægean were mainly peopled by members of the “Mediterranean” race, small of stature, with oval faces, with what craniologists might call rather “long” heads, with small hands and feet, a dark complexion, dark eyes and black curly hair. According to Professor H. L. Myres in his _Dawn of History_, the north-west quadrant of the Old World resolved itself racially into three belts, which were determined by geographical conditions. (Pp. 30 _et seq._ Williams & Norgate, 1912.) In the north were the pure white-skinned “Boreal” men of the Baltic basin; next came the sallow “Alpine” type, then the red-skinned “Mediterranean” man. The third was an intruder from the South, not from far enough south for him to be a negro, but probably from the northern shores of Africa. His intrusion “formed part of a much larger convergence of animals and plants from the south and south-east into the colder, moister regions which have been released since the Ice Age closed.” The limit of the movement seems to have been fixed by the shores of the mainland, further north than which the lungs and constitution of the people concerned forbade them to go.