Malta – small island, big history – Day 1

Our first day consisted of a visit to a Neolithic temple, Tarxien, and the paleontological cave of Ghar Dalam in Eastern Malta.

Tarxien Temples

The Tarxien Temples were discovered in 1914 by local farmers ploughing a field. The site consists of four temples which intersect each other and were built successively over a number of years believed to be between 3800 and 2500 BC. Malta’s largest example of ‘Fat Lady’ statutory, originally 3 metres tall, was discovered in an apse of the south temple.

The bottom part of a ‘Fat Lady’ statue

The Temple was completely covered so Themistocles Zammit, the director of the National Museum, spent 3 years excavating the site. By 1920, Zammit had identified and carried out restoration work on five separate but interconnected temples which all yielded a collection of artefacts. The ‘Fat Lady’ statues are thought to be genderless so could represent a man or a woman and could be a fertility charm.

The Apse of one of the temples

A protective shelter was constructed to cover the remains in 2015 and the site, along with Malta’s other Megalithic temples, was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992.

Our archaeologist guide gave us a view regarding the purpose of the temples based on the current thinking but, apart from the artefacts found in the temples, there are no firm clues to the beliefs or reasons why the temples were built as they are. What is undeniable is the skill of the craftsmen who did the work moving heavy stone with very basic tools. These temples date back possibly before Stonehenge, which was thought to be built about 2500 BC.

For our lunch break we relocated to Marsaxlokk, a fishing village where there is a wide range of restaurants around the small harbour.

This is a nice place but very busy as many other tourist were also lunching there. Malta is a small island so getting away from the crowds is difficult.

Our afternoon stop was the Ghar Dalam cave site which contains the earliest evidence so far of humans on Malta and is thought to be Malta’s oldest prehistoric site. The animals whose bones have been found in the cave have not existed on Malta for thousands of years.

The human artefacts are dated to about 7000 years ago while the animal bones date back more than 100,000 years. Thousands of bones of an extraordinary range of animals have been unearthed and demonstrate island dwarfism such as the dwarf elephants and hippopotami. The animal bones were washed into the cave by water in the Pleistocene era, around 500,000 years ago.

A series of archaeological excavations were held in the cave in the 19th century and the cave has various layers with different animal bones. The lower layer did not contain animal bones. The Hippopotamus layer contained the bones deposited in the Pleistocene era. In the Deer layer, remains dating from 25,000 to 18,000 years ago were recovered. A sterile layer corresponding to a volcanic ash layer lies over the deer layer and the top layer. The Cultural layer holds the earliest evidence of human presence in Malta some 7,400 years ago.

There is a small museum at the entrance to the cave site that displays the bones found. This is in a Victorian style with glass cases full of bones, but is nevertheless very informative and helps understand the evolution of Malta’s environment.

Words and photos: Copyright John Cruse 2024