Maltese prehistory : early life on the islands

Abstract

When the first settlers arrived on the Maltese islands, around 7000 years ago, most probably from nearby Sicily, they found a very different landscape from the denuded, rocky and arid one we see around us today. Although we have reason to believe that the process of soil erosion had already started through natural agents, namely wind and the alternation of increasingly differentiated dry and wet seasons, the natural environment of the islands was as yet untouched by man. No records have yet been taken from excavations that could throw light on the ecosystem prevalent on the archipelago at the time when man started interfering with it. We therefore cannot tell what kind of trees and plants thrived on the islands. It would be safe to say, however, that they were much more wooded than they have been since, although this assumption requires confirmation. Nor are we in a position to tell exactly what kind of animals roamed that virgin landscape except, perhaps, that they must have remained more or less the same as those obtaining just before the final retreat of the glaciers and the consequent definitive rise of the sea level at the end of the last Ice Age, some 10000 years ago, which left the Maltese archipelago detached for good from the continent. Some species, such as the bear, seem to have gone extinct already by then, while others, like the wild boar and deer, survived for much longer. There were definitely no domestic animals, and the first specimens of goats, sheep, cattle and swine had to be shipped over the relatively long stretch of sea that separated the new home from Sicily, together with the first range of domestic seeds for cultivation. The foremost preoccupation ofthese early farmers after setting up home on the islands was the reclamation of agricultural land for farming. Presumably this could only be done at the expense of the tree cover. Slash-and-burn methods must have accelerated the process of denudation which in time led to soil erosion and the loss of precious water into the sea. However, these problems do not seem to have become acute before the end of the following period of Maltese prehistory, some twenty-five centuries later. During this early Neolithic period there were no phenomenal rises in population. Nor were there any astounding cultural achievements such as were experienced in the following age. Malta's earliest inhabitants lived in natural caves, such as that of. Ghar Dalam, which abound in the Maltese limestone landscape, and in scattered small villages only one of which, that of Skorba, has been extensively explored. Their houses consisted of small oval huts built of sun-dried mud-brick and wattle-and-daub over low stone foundations. The same type of construction technique was extended to religious architecture, the only example of which was discovered in the same village at Skorba. Inside the so-called "Skorba shrine" fragments of the earliest representation of the human form were found small, unmistakably female figurines which have been connected with a belief in a Mother Goddess, a goddess of fertility representing the earth which is commonly believed to have been the object of worship among most Neolithic farming communities