Pre-Historic Modern Art

While in Athens we made an effort to imbibe the antiquity of the culture but, with only a few days in hand, the task was overwhelming. The guide-book, therefore, was an essential tool and, following its advice, we took a picnic with us to the Agora - the rambling, grassy site which from 600 BC until 600 AD was the bustling centre of Athens. There, apart from the remarkably intact Temple of Hephaestus, most of what remains looks like random stones and depressions in the ground, indecipherable to all but archaeologists.

While I sat in the shade of an olive tree with my sandwich I contemplated how so little comes to be left of all those elaborate, monumental buildings erected by the ancients at such cost. Did successive generations have so little respect for the achievements of their predecessors that they swept them away without a thought of posterity? The answer must be yes. The phenomenon is common elsewhere. In Britain the routine destruction of historical sites in the name of progress has spawned rearguard actions by preservation societies such as the Victorian Society (although the Victorians themselves ploughed their way through antiquity with railways, swept away mediaeval towns and polluted rural landscapes in the pursuit of profit) and the Modernist Society in its attempts to hang on to the best architecture of the first half of the 20th Century. I suppose we will soon need a Post-Modernist Society as well.

Historic as they are, the remains in the Agora are relatively recent: they represent the apogee of a civilisation that began to flower around 3000 years BC on the Aegean islands known as the Cyclades (around the same time as British tribes began the 1000 year-long process of building Stonehenge). Among the surviving Cycladic artefacts the carved female figures are the most distinctive. Unlike the later, classical Greek statues they are semi-abstract and the beauty of their graceful simplicity echoes through the millennia, having inspired the likes of Moore, Picasso and Modigliani and continuing to intrigue contemporary artists.

At first I was puzzled by how a group of small, thinly populated islands came to beget such a sophisticated culture but it might be explained as a case of 'necessity is the mother of invention'. In order to catch fish the islanders became expert sailors; later, when they began to extract valuable mineral resources from the land, their maritime skills came in handy for trading them; an economy of surplus was born and arts and science flourished in its wake. With the inevitable decline of their civilisation the buildings were destroyed or fell into ruin and artefacts were plundered and carried off as booty. Nowadays their economy is driven by beach-side holidays but we are fortunate that diligent archaeologists have been able to extrapolate the history from the ruins and that some of the artefacts are in museums where we can all admire them.

Back in Manchester, waiting to cross a road, I was approached by a scruffy-looking young man whose tentative "Excuse me" had the familiar tone of a beggar about to plead for cash. But for his foreign accent, I might have ignored him. As it turned out he was a German tourist on his first visit here and all he wanted was advice on where to eat cheaply. As I walked with him to the eat-all-you-can-for-£6.50 Chinese buffet I asked him what he was here to see.

"Old Trafford football ground," he said.

I wanted to introduce him to the city's outstanding legacy of scientific, technical and political achievements- all of which are celebrated in its museums and buildings - or urge him to visit the world's oldest passenger railway building while it still stands: but our time together was brief and he was going home in two days.