The Stone Age temples of Malta

Abstract

During the first half of the present century European archaeologists, puzzling over the similarities between ancient cultures, came up with the diffusion theory: a steady spread west wards of ideas, skills and inventions from the early civilizations of the Near East. In this way the mud-brick ziggurats of ancient Sumeria (the first temples known to man) had influenced the Egyptian pyramids (the oldest stone monuments in the world) and Malta's megalithic buildings were a mere reflection of the glories of ancient Greece. There was only one problem. They had no way of confirming exactly when anything had happened. Then came radio carbon dating, an offshoot of the research that produced the atomic bomb. The first radiocarbon dates did little to disturb the basic fabric of the theory, but when the technique was refined in the mid-1960s it blew holes through the entire edifice. Small communities, previously considered to be talented imitators, were shown to have been ingenious innovators astonishingly advanced for their time. The Egyptians could no longer be said to have created the oldest free-standing stone monuments in the world because the Stone Age temple builders of Malta had beaten them to it. This article takes an informed look at the major Megalithic temples scattered around Malta, and their cultural and historical importance.