writing was known and practised independently in Crete before
that cataclysmic overthrow of the early Greek civilization which
archaeologists are accustomed to ascribe to the hypothetical
invasion of the Dorians. The significance of this is that the art
of writing was known in Europe long before the advent of the
mythical Kadmus. But since the early Cretan scripts are not to be
identified with the scripts used in Greece in historical times,
whereas the latter are undoubtedly of lineal descent from the
Phoenician alphabet, the validity of the Kadmus legend, in a
modified form, must still be admitted.

As has just been suggested, the new knowledge, particularly that
which related to the great antiquity of characters similar to the
Phoenician alphabetical signs, is somewhat disconcerting. Its
general trend, however, is quite in the same direction with most
of the new archaeological knowledge of recent decades---that is
to say, it tends to emphasize the idea that human civilization in
most of its important elaborations is vastly older than has
hitherto been supposed. It may be added, however, that no
definite clews are as yet available that enable us to fix even an
approximate date for the origin of the Phoenician alphabet. The
signs, to which reference has been made, may well have been in
existence for thousands of years, utilized merely as property
marks, symbols for counting and the like, before the idea of
setting them aside as phonetic symbols was ever conceived.
Nothing is more certain, in the judgment of the present-day
investigator, than that man learned to write by slow and painful
stages. It is probable that the conception of such an analysis of
speech sounds as would make the idea of an alphabet possible came
at a very late stage of social evolution, and as the culminating