Until recently it has generally been taken for granted that cultural contacts between the Aegean and the Near East invariably proceeded in one direction, from East to West. It seems, however, that recent archaeological discoveries are about to change this picture. As these discoveries demonstrate, with the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization some Bronze Age populations of Greece migrated to the Levant and settled along the Mediterranean coast from Tarsos in the north to Ashkelon in the south, eventually to be assimilated into the native population. This fact suggests a much more complex network of relations between the Aegean and the Near East than the simple one-sided cultural dependence which has usually been postulated.