ABSTRACT
ON the organization of the social group the remains of prehistoric times leave a free field to the imagination and do not, it seems, supply any information. It is not impossible, however, to form a rough idea of the lines on which the lEgean societies must have developed. There is some likelihood that they passed through the same phases as the Hellenic peoples, who perhaps began over again the whole history of their precursors. We may suppose by analogy that, before the arrival of the Greeks, Greece already knew the system which has left so many traces in the legend and the epic, the religion and the law of future centuries, the system of the genos, the clan, the large family, and that gradually the genos broke up into smaller families. The fact is so general that it is hardly likely that it did not occur a first time on the shores of the lEgean between the Stone Age and the Iron Age.
