Malta's changing role in Mediterranean cross-currents : from prehistory to Roman times

Abstract

The Mediterranean started to assume its fundamental role of a unifying agent between peoples, cultures and between the different lands that surround it - between east and west, between north and south - during the seventh millennium B.C., that is, when the earliest signs of trade appeared which were stimulated by the availability of surplus food brought about by the discovery and adoption of agriculture in the Near East. Trade and agriculture interacted in such a way as to spread the new (or Neolithic) way of life, in all its facets, to the rest of the Mediterranean. Trade helped to spread the idea of agriculture to all the shores of the Mediterranean and beyond, and through trade the Neolithic farmers discovered increasingly more land to harness for agricultural purposes in order to feed the growing population.