Note 17 — Chapter XII · How Copper-culture reached China

The mineral area to the south-east of the Caspian Sea appears to have been exploited as early as the third millennium B.C., as was also the mineral area stretching from the Caspian to the eastern coast of the Black Sea. New trade routes were opened up and connections established, not only with Elam and Babylonia in the south, but with Egypt, through Palestine, and with Crete and with the whole Ægean area. Troy became the “clearing-house” of this early trade flowing from western Asia into Europe. The enterprising sea-kings of Crete appear to have penetrated the Dardanelles and reached the eastern shores of the Black Sea, where they tapped the overland trade routes.17 Dr. Hubert Schmidt, who accompanied the Pumpelly expedition to Russian Turkestan in 1903–4, found Cretan Vasiliki pottery in one of the excavated mounds, and, in another, “three-sided seal-stones of Middle Minoan type (c. 2000 B.C.), engraved with Minoan designs”.18 There is evidence which suggests that this trade in metals between western Asia and the Ægean area was in existence long before 2500 B.C., and not long after 3000 B.C.