More than 4,500 years ago, one of the most remarkable civilisations of European prehistory came to an end on Malta. For a thousand years, a simple agricultural society on the small Mediterranean island and nearby Gozo, comparable to those in many other areas in Europe and the Near East, built megalithic monuments, temples, which were unparalleled at that time and still spark our imagination. These temples are among the oldest freestanding structures in the world and have been the subject of investigations since the early 19th century, but the precise role they served is still shrouded in mystery, as are the striking, corpulent statuettes found within them and in the islands’ similarly gigantic underground tombs. As the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden presents an exhibition on this extraordinary Neolithic culture, we take a broad look at the archaeology of megalithic Malta over the following pages – not only what is on display at the Dutch exhibition but also what can be found at the museums and sites on the islands themselves.
With a total land area of 316km², the Maltese islands – consisting of Malta itself, the smaller island of Gozo to the north-west, and the tiny island of Comino in between – would comfortably fit into the 572km² Isle of Man, one of the British Isles. Yet despite their small size, the Maltese islands are packed with an impressive density and rich variety of monuments, including some famous UNESCO World Heritage sites. Besides the prehistoric temples and tombs we discuss here, there are also Roman sites, including catacombs; the many fortresses and houses founded by the knights of the Order of Saint John (the Order of Malta), particularly in the capital Valletta; and the heritage associated with British rule, such as the impressive naval base. As well as the attractions of sun and sea, these islands have a lot of culture to offer, characterised by international cross-pollination with Arab, Mediterranean, and British elements. The islands are therefore well worth the trip, not least because visitors can come face-to-face with prehistoric monuments that were built 1,000 years before the great pyramids at Giza. These impressive monuments, which are best experienced up close, were accompanied by a curious cult without parallel. The story begins about 8,000 years ago.
Long before its human occupants arrived, Malta was inhabited by unusual animals, including dwarf elephants (Elephas falconeri), hippopotami, and giant dormice. Their bones are mostly found in the Għar Dalam cave, the ‘Cave of Darkness’, in the south of Malta. The unusual size of these animals is probably related to the isolation of the island and the special path that evolution sometimes takes on islands, as Charles Darwin observed. While not the same as biological evolution, we might assume that the rather special cultural developments that would follow millennia later also owed something to the relative isolation of the Maltese islands. The dwarf elephants, giant dormice, and other prehistoric species were already extinct when the first human inhabitants set foot on Malta around 5900 BC, but traces of these first people were also found in the same cave.
