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Malta’s Stone Temples and
Goddesses: By Linda C. Eneix |
A few parts doesn’t quite fit the Atlantis myth. This island did not completely disappear under the sea, for example. The oldest stone buildings on the planet remain clearly visible on dry land, almost in defiance. The people of Malta in that age would not have made war on Athens and they didn't use chariots. However, recent underwater discoveries and current research are revealing compelling links between Malta and several of the ancient stories.
Imagine a natural artistic paradise: no weapons; no war; not even a defensive wall for over a thousand years. Even the paradise of Tahiti in the South Pacific cannot make the same claim. The Temple People: isolated on a sun-drenched island, solidly lining up mega-ton stones to record the movement of the sunrise and the passing of the seasons; heaving them into architecture the size of a two-story house in suburbia; painting and carving and decorating into perfection.
At least 23 sites where megalithic temples once stood are known today in an area of only a few square miles. Some of the structures were ruined in antiquity, some have been lost forever due to modern construction, yet some are still standing after all this time -- right through every event in recorded history. There is something compelling about those stones. There is something mysterious and other-worldly about them, and yet something that is hauntingly familiar. The culture which assembled them is so remotely in the past that they were already forgotten a long time before people started writing. All trace of them ends abruptly at around 2,500 BC, and any memory of them could only have survived through myths and legends.
Later generations confronted with the striking remains would have needed to come up with explanations for them. Human nature wonders and demands answers. An ancient mariner walking in the ruins of a Maltese temple and encountering the remains of a "weighty" statue which was probably close to eight feet tall in its heyday would probably have no trouble imagining a lost race of over-achievers: meaty female Amazons who could heft the stone blocks with ease. On the Maltese island of Gozo, there still persists an age-old folktale of a giant woman who carried stones on her head to build the temples.
As stated by Maltese architect Richard England, "we lack the soul to create such buildings today." We build grand churches and temples, but they are not erected by the worshippers. Hired construction crews and engineers are generally not doing their work for religious fulfillment. Maybe with technology, we’ve lost some spirit. Maybe that’s why the myth of a vanished Atlantis continues to be so attractive. How do we in our modern society explain the motivation for the cyclopean efforts required to build megalithic temples?
To try to understand the undocumented prehistoric people of Malta, we need to suspend a lot of things that most of us take for granted about religion and about the past. The fact is that the human remains of the period include healthy bones of about the same size as Mediterranean people today. They looked a lot like us.
Inside the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta, Malta are a few halls of unimaginably priceless artifacts sitting quietly in their lighted display cases. There are many theories and interpretations surrounding the shapes of the sculptures. Are these really "fat ladies" as they have been labeled? In some pieces there can be no doubt about gender. In others, the absence of clearly defined sexual characteristics leaves room for debate. One observant young man pointed out that to a completely uninformed viewer with no sense of context (an alien from space for example,) statues of the Virgin Mary are just as non-definitive.
Suppose we look at the more "meaty" figures as representations of abundance? Maybe gender wasn’t all that important. In the abstract, one can perhaps accept the idea of an ultimate femininity that didn’t have to be strictly sexual. To confuse the issue, there is a cluster of figures, again lacking sexual characteristics, which suggest a male shape. Other pieces clearly demonstrate that the temple-period artist knew how to be accurate. A mystery.
Looking closer at the fabulous collection known as "the shaman’s bundle" (so-called because of the way it lay when found after being buried for 5,000 years or so,) we see that these figures are elaborately dressed with styled hairdo’s. Other figures also indicate apparel and garments of woven fabric. Spindle whorls were turned up in the excavations, and so were buttons.
Among the most impressive of the artifact sculptures, "the sleeping lady" and "the twin seated figures" are seen to be occupying furniture. Close examination shows a sophisticated woven pattern of caning and reed. The temple people were not savage cavemen.
The temples were developed in the Neolithic Period: a time when people across Europe and Asia had mastered the production of a continuous food supply through planting crops and by domesticating animals. The people who built the temples got to the Maltese islands by way of Sicily. They navigated the 60-mile crossing in craft large enough to carry not only their families and household goods, but also seed and livestock. The earth and the things which it provided were of foremost importance in those days. In addition to the obvious fruit and grain, the earth grew the grass which fed the animals which produced milk, wool, meat, bone for tools. And the earth provided the stone for the temples.
Atlanteans?
Well, who knows. Myths come from somewhere. There is usually a kernel of some truth behind the fantastic stories of the Mediterranean - a fact which is proving itself every day.
A scientific
conference in
2003 is expected to introduce important new evidence that will impact on the
story of human development.
Count on hearing more about ancient Malta.
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reserved. Revised: September 09, 2002 . |