Malta’s first inhabitants

The island of Malta might be small but it certainly packs a big punch in historical terms. In the struggle for dominion of the Mediterranean it has played a key role in centuries of sparring between the east and west. Enduring occupation from the Phoenicians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Sicilians, Hospitallers, French, and British, it has a colourful and complex heritage. Our focus, however, is on its earliest and most extraordinary occupation when some 5000 years ago this tiny archipelago was home to an astonishing culture which created elaborate stone temples and rock cut tombs. A thousand years before the Great Pyramid at Giza was erected, people on the tiny island of Malta were moving stones weighing up to 50 tonnes to make huge stone temples. Among the oldest ritual structures in the world, the number of them is astounding and in their complexity must have required considerable planning and organisation. Join us as we explore some of the island’s most extraordinary archaeology of a sophistication, character, and quantity unparalleled elsewhere.