Megalithic Temples in Malta: The Oldest in the World

Malta’s prehistoric megalithic Temples are considered to be among the earliest temples in civilization, dating back to before the Pyramids of Egypt and the Stonehenge stone structures.

These impressive buildings have been designed for three different ages, approximately between 3600 BC and 700 BC, and some are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Many tourists come to Malta to witness these magnificent temples mostly built from coralline rock and globigerina limestone.

Ggantija (Gozo)

This Templar complex, formed by two adjacent temples, represents the oldest example of the megalithic temple of the archipelago, dating back to a period between 3600 and 3000 BC, thus built before the famous Stonehenge.

Behind these temples lies a sequence of extraordinary historical events. For starters, the name Ġgantija is derived from the word ‘ġgant’, Maltese for giant since Gozitans held the belief that a race of giants was responsible for building the temples.

This comes as no surprise once you behold the megalithic limestone blocks from which the temples were constructed, weighing over fifty tons and exceeding five metres in height. Built with flint and obsidian and enclosed within a wall circuit, the temples had to accommodate propitiatory rites. At the front of the temples, there is a large terrace which was likely used for ceremonies.

In fact, remains of animal bones which were discovered on-site and the use of fire as evidenced by the presence of stone hearths, suggest that there used to be some sort of ritual that involved animal sacrifice. After the temples fell into disuse around 2500 BC, they were not fully revealed to modern civilization until the nineteenth century.

Hagar Qim

This copper age temple was built around 2700 BC but was already undergoing various modifications in the first period. A monolith outside the temple was interpreted as a symbol of phallic worship that probably lived in the temple.

Hal Saflieni Hypogeum

This template complex is articulated on three underground levels that push up to 12 m deep. Built-in different stages, between 3000 and 2000 BC. Hal Saflieni is noted for an incredibly modern spiral staircase in shapes and design. In the second level lie the rooms of the greatest times, that is, the Oracle Room and Sancta Sanctorum.

Mnajdra

The best preserved of the three Mnajdra temples and interesting for the secret rooms that are hidden in the thickness of the walls. And it is likely that in this temple a curative cult has been practised because there have been models of anatomical parts of the terracotta human body with symptoms of infirmity.

Tarxien

The first temple and the oldest dates back to 2200 BC, while the most recent dates back to 400 years later. Within these temples was discovered the most colossal stone statue of the time: originally a height of 2.50 m, this statue, which presumably represents a Mother Goddess, was divided into half and the part is now missing.

Tas-Silg

Tas Silg represents an ancient place of worship (IV millennium BC) characterized by continuous use of, particularly long time. In addition to the remains of structures dating back to the earliest times, evidence was found that even the Phoenicians had re-used this Templar complex.

Skorba Temples

Skorba is an archaeological site situated in Mgarr Malta, only a couple of kilometre removed from Ta Hagrat. The site consists of prehistoric structures that illustrate the life of the first settlers on the Maltese Island.

These temples were excavated in the 1960s by David Trump, who had discovered the remains of 2 megalithic temples in the excavation, one of which was built around the same time as the Ggantija Temples (3,150-2,500 BC), and the other around the Tarxien Temples (3,600-3,200 BC).

However, the earliest remains that consist of a wall, date back to the Ghar Dalam phase (5,000-4,300 BC) as it was discovered that Skorba was occupied before the temples were built. Next to this wall were remains of wheat, lentil and barley seeds along with pottery, animal bone and stone tools.

 Additionally, remains of domestic huts where temple builders used to dwell were discovered on-site, some of which date back to the Temple Period (i.e. before 3600 BC), which makes them one of the oldest structures on the Islands.

Within these huts, various structures including female figures and goat skulls were found and are thought to have been used as some kind of shrine. The temples were recognised as an archaeological a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992, and due to them being small and fragile, only 15 guests are allowed in at a time. Nonetheless, the Skorba Temples are definitely not to be missed!

In between visiting these important historic sites why not stay at our hotel in Malta and enjoy one of our luxury suites?

And if you’re looking for some more places of interest we have plenty of palaces that worth a visit and come summer it’s always worth checking out a typical Maltese Festa.

A lost 8th continent is hidden nearly 1,000 miles under Europe, new research shows. Scientists named it ‘Greater Adria.’

Not all the continents missing are myths like Atlantis; here is one whose existence is only scientifically confirmed. Greater Adria broke off from North Africa 240 million years ago. About 120 million years later, it started sinking beneath Southern Europe. But bits of it remain, scattered across local mountain ranges.

It was the geographical resemblances in those mountains that had led scientists to hypothesise the presence of an ancient continent in the Mediterranean.

But the region’s geology is so complex that only recent advances in computing—and a 10-year survey by an international team of scientists—were able to produce a geo-historical outline of that former landmass. This is the very first map of the world’s latest lost continent.

The 100-million-year history of Greater Adria starts nearly a quarter of a billion years ago. The world was a very different place back then. It was just recovering from the Permian-Triassic extinction, which came pretty close to wiping out all life on Earth. The planet was repopulated by the first mammals and dinosaurs.

Supercontinental break-up

Oblivious that biological imperative, Earth’s geology was on a course of its own: fragmentation. At that time, the planet’s land masses had coagulated into a single supercontinent, Pangaea.

Around 240 million years ago, a Greenland-sized piece of continental plate broke off from what would become North Africa and started drifting north. Between 120 and 100 million years ago, the continent smashed into Southern Europe. Even though the speed of that collision was no more than 3 to 4 cm per year, it ended up shattering the 100-km thick crust.

Most of the continental plate was pushed under Southern Europe and swallowed up by Earth’s mantle, a process known as subduction. Seismic waves can still detect the plate, now stuck at a depth of up to 1500 km.

But some of the sedimentary rocks on top were too light to sink, so they were scraped off and got crumpled up—the origin of various mountain chains across the Mediterranean region: the Apennines in Italy, parts of the Alps, and ranges in the Balkans, Greece and Turkey.

Death and birth

Flowing from present to deep past, this time-lapse reconstruction of the geological history of the Mediterranean shows the death and birth (in that order) of Greater Adria in unprecedented amounts of detail.

Some bits of Greater Adria survived both the shave-off into mountainhood and death by subduction.

“The only remaining part of this continent is a strip that runs from Turin via the Adriatic Sea to the heel of Italy’s boot,” says Douwe van Hinsbergen, Professor of Global Tectonics and Paleogeography at Utrecht University, and the study’s principal researcher.

That’s an area geologists call ‘Adria’, so the team, consisting of scientists from Utrecht, Oslo and Zürich, called the lost continent ‘Greater Adria’.

What was the continent like? A shallow continental shelf in a tropical sea, where sediments were slowly turned into rock, Greater Adria possibly resembled Zealandia, a largely submerged continent with bits sticking out (i.e. New Zealand and New Caledonia), or perhaps the Florida Keys, an archipelago of non-volcanic islands. Either way, dotted with islands and archipelagos above the water, and lots of coral below, it was “probably good for scuba diving,” Van Hinsbergen says.

It took scientists this long to produce the first map of Greater Adria not just because the Mediterranean is, in the words of Van Hinsbergen, “a geological mess (…) Everything is curved, broken and stacked. Compared to this, the Himalayas represent a rather simpler system.” Greater Adria perished by subduction and scraping-off. The Himalayas emerged by the collision of two continents.

Ore deposits

The region also has a complex geopolitical makeup, obliging the researchers to piece together evidence from 30 different countries, from Spain to Iran, “each with its own geological survey, own maps, own ideas about evolutionary history. Research often stops at national borders.”