In the Islands of the giant temples

Abstract

Experts in navigation say that, although Malta and the Sicilian coastline are indivisible from their higher points on very clear days, Malta quickly vanishes from sight when a boat puts out to sea. Smoke from the eruptions of Etna would no doubt have reminded the inhabitants of the tiny archipelago that Sicily, the largest island in the entire Mediterranean, lay to the north, across no more than 90 km of open sea. Among the many mysteries that surround the Neolithic period, several are bound with questions about how the first settlers and farmers navigated across the Mediterranean, on vessels of a form. we can only guess at, which we must try to imagine loaded with exhausted and morose children, piles of jars, nets, supplies and animals in cages, as well as uninvited and unwelcome passengers such as pathogens, parasites and rodents. When son1.e such vessel brought the first settlers to the Maltese archipelago more than 7000 years ago, it opened an extraordinary chapter in Mediterranean history. Perhaps it is no accident that on Malta, by the entrance of the western apse of the South Temple at Tarxien, two standing megaliths are covered with graffiti that, although heavily eroded by weathering, may still be made out as prehistoric boats.