In this way, because it is overly centered and overly unified, the account is also simplified in its lines. Not only does Thucydides leave in the shadows the fact that other civilizations coexisted; he neglects equally that to some extent they form a sequence. And, by omitting external influences, he also omits even more the high points and the low, the ends and the new beginnings. In particular, he offers no scope for imagining what excavations have revealed regarding, for example, the heights attained by Cretan civilization and the decline following the end of the Mycenaean period.