Archaeology

Abstract

Until future archaeological discoveries prove otherwise, only the last 7000 years of the 50,000 years of man's existence in his present form of both physical and cultural evolution -that of Homo Sapiens Sapiens -can be documented archaeologically on the Maltese islands. His first presence on the islands is not testified before 5000 B.C., that is, not before he learnt to grow his own food and to construct sea-craft that was reliable enough to enable him to brave long distances of open sea. Although there were long periods of time, each of thousands of years, namely during the Ice Ages, when the Maltese archipelago was physically connected by land to Sicily and the European continent as a result of drastic falls in sea levels, no traces of human activity have been recorded pertaining to those times. The human molars once reputed to be characteristic of Neanderthal man and to have been found in a Pleistocene context at Ghar Dalam are no longer held to constitute reliable evidence.