Hagar Qim megalithic site in Malta. Source: BigStockPhoto
Posted on 12/24/2014 6:25:33 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The ancient Temple People civilization of Malta did not suffer invasions, widespread disease or famine, past research has shown. Why their culture died is a mystery.
A large team of researchers is carrying out studies to determine why the Temple People’s civilization on the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo ended. The Temple People had an incredibly rich culture with unique art, stone temples and structures, huge burial sites and advanced agriculture going back to 4000 BC and ending around 2900 BC.
The stone structures on the island are among the oldest free-standing stone structures in history, Malta Today says in a long story about the new research...
The Temple People had 30 temple complexes on Malta and Gozo in their 1,100-year history. They had intricate burial sites, complex rituals and animal sacrifices, Malta Today says.
Artwork flourished. Archaeologists and others have found hundreds of ancient statues. Some are famous as abundantly fertile "fat ladies", but these are only around 15 percent of the statues found. Phallic and androgynous symbols are much more common...
They will study the remains of mollusks found in the cores to determine the ecology and cultural habits of ancient people of Malta and a nearby island, Gozo. The species of snails on Malta are the same as 7,000 years ago. There are three main types of snails on Malta, said researcher Katrin Fenech: land snails, brackish water mollusks and marine mollusks. If you find a snail shell that needed shade in a dry, rocky place, one could assume the area had previously been treed before people arrived on Malta in Neolithic times.
(Excerpt) Read more at ancient-origins.net ...
Hagar Qim megalithic site in Malta. Source: BigStockPhoto
Maybe it was because their kids stopped going to temple?
Mnajdra Temple, Malta. Source: BigStockPhoto
After spending years toting those huge stones, they probably dropped dead. ;’)
Manuscripts revealed an 18 trillion dollar deficit, loose immigration laws and liberalism were the three main factors.
Al Sharpton’s ancestors?
More takers than givers, probably.
Malta has an interesting history. The British barely held on to it during WWII. With the island’s population facing starvation, Churchill suggested they might air drop vitamins to them.
Of course people more knowledgeable than Churchill about nutrition explained to him why that would not work.
St. Paul was shipwrecked on the island and described the inhabitants as very kind to the survivors.
All the rich people and tourists moved to the island resorts there on Malta.
The poor people couldn`t afford the high rents on the West Side.
So they moved to Sardinia where they ate sardines.
Then the rulers of Malta taxed the rich people so much that they moved to Florida.
Soon there was no one to tax, so everyone left.
Only things left was the falcon.
... except for John Roberts, who goes there to stash his payoffs.
:-)
I visited this site years ago. It is amazing.
You may be awfully close to right. The culture was 1,100 years old. People get tired. They moved on to something else.
Homo marriage and welfare.
They wasted their effort on dumb temples instead of trying to maintain their communities?
Normally I pay little attention to the “It must be Aliens” guy when he’s on some show. I tunes in just before I was going to turn in for the night, so I did not catch the name of the piece, and did not stay up to see the end - just part of one short segment.
In this segment, Giorgio visits a white haired guy excavating one of Malta’s Megalithic sites and asks questions. (There was more to both the questions and answers - I give what I remember here.)
The first is, “What do you make of all these stone balls lying around?” The guy says, “They fit into the holes in the blocks to allow them to move without falling when there is an earthquake.”
Giorgio asks, “What do you think happened to these people?”
Giorgio asks about the “Fat ladies” (Venus figurines). The inference made here is they are very similar to those found in various Upper Paleolithic sites from 35,000 years ago. The unanswered question is: how could such a cult persist over 10s of thousands of years, if these Maltese sites are as recent as orthodox archeology claims?
The man answers, “They were washed away in the Flood.” Here, Giorgio asks when it might have happened in his opinion. The man says that these structures are similar in construction to Gobekli Tepe which recent digs turned up associated skeletons which no longer have any carbon remaining to be dated - making them and the Maltese sites over 30,000 years old and the period in which the man seems to think that the Flood happened - or at least I think that was what was implied.
After some more questions and answers - no mention of Aliens, thankfully, Giorgio proceeds to ask if the man knows anything about the cone heads he has heard were found here.
The man tells him that, prior to WWII when the site was originally excavated, there were hundreds of them found in a burial chamber. They were removed and stored, but during the war they were destroyed in the bombing. However, a few were moved to the local museum and survive.
Following directions, Giorgio goes to the obscure, out of the way, very small museum. There does not seem to be must of interest in the modest displays. Giorgio finds the curator and asks to see the cone heads. She takes him into the storage area and displays them. There are only six or so remaining; they were either displayed for a short while in years past or never displayed - I don’t remember.
We see the misshapen skulls, one or two being more pumpkin shaped than cone skulls. Other than the shape, all but one seem normal. However, one skull has only one growth ridge instead of the normal two.
Giorgio asks what has been learned about them. The curator says they have never been studied.
I didn’t learn if the cone heads were associated with the building of the stone structures or were buried before or after they were constructed.
We are told about how common cone heads were in antiquity and a cultural ‘statement’ still practiced today in remote places.
We hear NOTHING from Giorgio abut Aliens. But it was the best interview I have ever seen the man do.
Thought you might find this tidbit interesting ...
Your homeland's safe I can assure
I've seen the guards with silver swords
White angels on the leeward side of Malta
It was public knowledge that until 1985 a number of skulls, found in pre-historic Maltese temples at Taxien, Ggantja and Hal Saflienti, were exposed in the Archaeological Museum in Valletta. They have since disappeared without a trace.
'Only the photographs taken by the Maltese researcher Dr. Anton Mifsud and his colleague, Dr. Charles Savona Ventura, remain to testify the existence of the skulls and prove their abnormality. Books written by the two Maltese doctors, illustrate a collection of skulls that show peculiar abnormalities and/or pathologies. Sometimes inexistent cranial knitting lines, abnormally developed temporal partitions, drilled and swollen occiputs as following recovered traumas, but above all, a strange, lengthened skull, bigger and more peculiar than the others, lacking of the median knitting. The presence of this finding leads to a number of possible hypotheses in consideration of other finds of similar skulls, from Egypt to South America, the particular deformity, unique in the panorama of medical pathology referred to such distant times, (we are talking about approximately 3000 BC) could be an exceptional discovery.
The skulls were all found in the Hal Saflienti hypogeum, where a sacred well was dedicated to the Mother Goddess and where also the small statue of a sleeping goddess was found, associated to a relic with a snake inscription on it. One in particular had a cranium showing a very pronounced dolichocephalous, in other words, a lengthened posterior part of the skullcap, besides the lack of median knitting, technically named "sagitta". This last detail has been considered "impossible" by medics and anatomists, not having analogous pathological cases in international medical literature. It is a characteristic that emphasizes the anomaly of this finding with the result of producing a natural lengthening of the cranium (not due to bandaging or boards as used in pre-Colombian civilizations)'.
It is proposed, on the basis of these findings, that the group of skulls found in the Hypogeum were representative of a group of peoples who were considered of importance (as attested to by the location of their discovery), and who had a natural genetic tendency for elongated skulls, were integrally involved in the activities of the temple builders of the time. Other skulls found in the Brochtorff circle (Hypogeum II), are considered to have had their heads bandaged in order to produce their cranial deformities.
(Extract from Hera Magazine, Italy: 1999)
From NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE January to June, 1920 VOLUME XXXVII
"From an examination of the skeletons of the polished-stone age, it appears that the early inhabitants of Malta were a race of long-skulled people of lower medium height, akin to the early people of Egypt, who spread westward along the north coast of Africa, whence some went to Malta and Sicily and others to Sardinia and Spain."
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