Maltese Prehistory.Pdf

Maltese Prehistory Early life on the islands ANTHONY BONANNO longer. There were definitely no domestic among most animals, and the first specimens of goats, nities. sheep, cattle and swine had to be shipped hen the first settlers arrived on over the relatively long stretch of sea that The Megalitbic Phenomenon Wthe Maltese islands, around 7000 separated the new home from Sicily, to Things start to become more complex and years ago, most probably from gether with the first range of domesticseeds sophisticated in the second period of Mal nearby Sicily, they found a very different for cultivation. ta's prehistory, which is characterized by landscape from t he denuded, rocky and The foremost preoccupation ofthese ear those astounding buildings, shaped with arid one we see around us today. Although ly farmers after setting up home on the Gargantuan stones, that are known as we have reason to believe that the process islands was the reclamation of agricultural Megalithic temples. A new migration wave, of soil erosion had already started through land for farming. Presumably this could again originating from southeast Sicily, natural agents, namely wind and the alter only be done at the expense of the tree seems to have replaced or completely sub nation of increasingly differentiated dry cover. Slash-and-burn methods must have dued, at least culturally, the previous early and wet seasons, the natural environment accelerated the process of denudation Neolithic population. This new population of the islands was as yet untouched by man. which in time led to soil erosion and the loss brought some new ideas with it, a new No records have yet been taken from exca of precious water into the sea. cultural background. Its first recorded vations that could throw light on the ecosys However, these problems do not seem to manifestations are collective underground tem prevalent on the archipelago at the have become acute before the end of the tombs, examples of which were first discov time when man started interfering with it. following period of Maltese prehistory, ered at Zebbug and very recently at Xaghra, We therefore cannot tell what kind of trees some twenty-five centuries later. During Gozo. This type of collective tomb was to and plants thrived on the islands. It would this early Neolithic period there were no develop in time into huge underground be safe to say, however, that they were phenomenal rises in population. Nor were complexes like the eerie Hypogeum of Hal much more wooded than they have been there any astounding cultural achievements Saflieni. From the Zebbug tombs comes a since, although this assumption requires such as were experienced in the following mysterious piece of sculpture, a stylized , confirmation. Nor are we in a position to age. Malta's earliest inhabitants lived in highly abstracted human head with the tell exactly what kind of animals roamed natural caves, such as that of. Ghar Dalam , facial features suggested by incised lines that virgin landscape except, perhaps, that which abound in the Maltese limestone and holes. Wnat is stranger still is the fact they must have remained more or less the landscape, and in scattered small villages that it has nothing in common with the same as those obtaining just before the final only one of which, that of Skorba, has been characteristic anthropomorphic sculpture retreat of the glaciers and the consequent extensively explored. Their houses con definitive rise of the sea level at the end of sisted of small oval huts built of sun-dried Top: Frieze with domestic animals from the last Ice Age, some 10000 years ago, mud-brick and wattle-and-daub over low the·Hal Tarxien site (3rd millennium BC). which left the Maltese archipelago de stone foundations. The same type of con Right: Headless statue ofa "great god tached for good from the continent. Some struction technique was extended to reli dess" from Hagar Qim (2800 BC). species, such as the bear, seemto have gone gious architecture, the only example of extinct already by then, while others, like which was discovered in the same village at Oben: Fries mit Haustieren, aus Hal the wild boar and deer, survived for much Skorba. Inside the so-called "Skorba Tarxien (3. Jahrtausend v. ehr.). Rsch fs: shrine" fragments of the earliest represen Kopf/ose Statue einer «Grossen Goffin}) A nfhony Bonanno, tation of the human form were fo und aus Hagar Qim (2800 v. ehr.) studied and graduated at the universities of Malta and Palermo and at the Institute of Archaeology, small, unmistakably female figurines which haut: frise decoree d'animaux London University. He has taught Archaeology and have been connected with a belief in a En Classics at the University of Malta since 1971. He is domestiques, de Hal Tarx ien (Ifle mille· now Professor of Archaeology and Head of Deport Mother Goddess, a goddess of fertility rep ment of Classics at the some University. He is the naire av. J.-c.). A droite: statue acephale author of various publications on Roman art and resenting the earth which is commonly be d'une ((Grande Deesse» de Mo/t(;iJ; prove Maltese archaeology. lieved to have been the object of worship nant du site de Hagar Kim (2800 av.J.-c.). 28 24~786 of the Temple culture which developed explanation of the Maltese phenomenon is The Temple Culture came to a myste gradually from this new population, from a reflection of the impact produced by this rious, probably sudden, end towards the the Zebbug people. surprisingly advanced prehistoric culture middle of the third millennium Be, al on the modern mind. though some see signs of cultural decline Isolation, but 8 Stone-moving Belief An even more bizarre explanation of the before the final collapse . Many explana What is obvious about this cultural de Maltese Megalithic monuments was pro tions have been proposed for this collapse. velopment is that while contacts with the posed in the nineteenth century by another Some suggestions are more plausible than outside world. namely Sicily, Lipari and writer on Maltese antiquities, G. Grognet others, but all remain based on varying Pantelleria, as well as Italy and perhaps de Vasse , whose much more lasting and even beyond. were maintained , these were valid merit is that of having designed the limited to the continued importation of raw architecture of the splendid Mosta church. materials for tools and even some ritual Grognet believed that Malta, with its queer objects (like the green stone axe pendants). Megalithic remains, must be the last surviv In brief, traffic in either direction was re ing remnant of the lost Atlantis. His writ stricted to the material culture. For the rest, ings on this subject are found in a published starting from the third phase of this period, volume entitled Compendia della Isola the Ggantija phase, this people of farmers Atlantide della quale Ie !sale di Malta, Gozo initiated a cultural development of great e Comino sono certissimi resti (1854) and in consequence, but in total isolation, without a beautiful manuscript preserved in the Na inspiration from outside and without any tional Library of Malta (Bib!. Ms. 614). The apparent influence directed towards the manuscript incorporates a large number of outside. This cultural development, made colour drawings , including a map of Atlan possible by an efficient, surplus-producing tis , plans and elevations of the Ggantija, agricultural economy, an equally efficient, Hagar Qirn and Mnajdra temples, and a even if primitive, social organization and a self-portrait. Grognet went so far with his deeply-rooted, literally stone-moving be theory as to "invent" a script - incidentally lief in a great religious idea, brought about very similar to that of the Phoenicians the conceptualization and the realization of which he claimed must have been in use such feats of architectural ingenuity as the among the inhabitants of Atlantis and, Ggantija temples and those of Tarxien, therefore, the builders of the temples. Hagar Qim and Mnajdra. In their efforts to understand the pro An Extraordinary People cesses of the cultural evolution of mankind Whatever our conclusions on the origins of some students of antiquity - be they histo the ideas inspiring the building of the Mal rians or prehistorians, archaeologists, so tese prehistoric temples and the social and cial anthropologists or historians of religion religious forces that made them possible , - find it difficult to accept that such a grand we cannot entertain any doubts that be culture could have possibly developed inde tween 5500 and 4500 years ago the Maltese pendently of the great cultural currents that islands were inhabited by an extraordinary were brought to bear on virtually all the people, extraordinary not because they lands bordering the Mediterranean at that were giants or were supported by some time. It is within this mental framework visitors from outer space - two other wild that we must consider diffusionist theories ideas suggested in the past, the first one in prevalent in the first half of our century, the seventeenth century, the second only a from Worsaae and Montelius to Gordon couple of decades ago - but because they Childe's view of "the irradiation of Euro were intelligent and resourceful people , as I pean barbarism by Oriental civilization". believe the Maltese people still are. They The widespread theory of the diffusion of must have been both te~hnologically as well ideas , of civilization, from east to west did as artistically endowed. Evidence of the not exclude the formulation of at least one first quality lies in the sheer size of the stone HENRI STIERUN theory that the cradle of Mediterranean blocks used, and in many cases, such as degrees of conjecture.

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