Malta

Malta’s megalithic temples were built between about 3600 and 2500 BC, by the range Wikipedia’s article on them gives, and until the discovery of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey they were claimed as the oldest free-standing structures on Earth. Heritage Malta’s own page for Ġgantija gives a wider span for that site’s two structures, 3800 to 2000 BC. UNESCO inscribed Ġgantija on Gozo in 1980 and added Ħaġar Qim, Mnajdra, Ta’ Ħaġrat, Skorba and Tarxien in 1992.

Ġgantija stands on the Xagħra plateau on Gozo: two structures with separate entrances, enclosed in one outer megalithic wall, each a set of apses off a central corridor. Heritage Malta notes that its builders used the hard-wearing Coralline limestone extensively and kept the softer Globigerina for inner furnishings such as doorways, altars and decorated slabs, and that two fragments of plaster with red ochre suggest the inner walls were once plastered and painted.

Ħaġar Qim sits on the crest of a ridge above the open sea. Its doorways are either trilithons, two uprights with a lintel, or “porthole” openings cut through a single block, and parts of it were roofed by courses of megaliths, each smaller than the one below. Mnajdra lies about 500 metres downhill, and Heritage Malta reads the closeness as a sign that one community likely used both. The two have stood under protective shelters since 2008, put up to slow the deterioration Heritage Malta has watched since they were excavated.

At Ħal Tarxien, found by the farmer Lorenzo Despott in 1913, a complex of four structures, the South structure carries relief carvings of spirals and of animals, among them goats, bulls, pigs and a ram, beside the lower part of a colossal statue of a figure in a pleated skirt. The temple-building culture disappeared around 2500 BC. In the Early Bronze Age newcomers turned parts of Tarxien into a cremation cemetery, and a later Bronze Age phase, Borġ in-Nadur, from about 1500 to 700 BC, is named after a site in Birżebbuġa, the same town as the St George’s Bay ruts.

The Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, on a hilltop in Paola not far from the Grand Harbour, is the temple culture turned inward: halls, chambers and passages hewn out of the Globigerina limestone, in use from 4000 to 1500 BC by Heritage Malta’s dating. It was dug in three levels, its users going deeper as space ran short. Some smoothly finished chambers on the middle level recall the interiors of the temples above ground; the deepest room, on the lower level, lies 10.6 metres below the road.

It was found by accident in 1902, by a stonemason laying foundations for a row of houses. Most of the houses were finished before the find was reported, and the upper level was damaged beyond repair; the site became public property at the end of 1903 and was excavated until 1911. Its finds include pottery, human bones, ornaments, small carved animals and the figurine known as the Sleeping Lady, now in the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta. UNESCO lists the Hypogeum as a World Heritage Site; Heritage Malta’s page dates the listing to 1981, while Wikipedia, citing UNESCO, gives 1980, the year Ġgantija was inscribed.

Heritage Malta lets 10 people into the Hypogeum at a time, and gives preservation as the reason: carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity in the chambers all change with the number of people inside.

In 1565 an Ottoman force besieged Malta, then held by the Order of St John. Fort St Elmo, at the tip of the Sceberras peninsula, took the brunt of it; by Heritage Malta’s account the small fort held out for a month and surrendered on 23 June. The siege as a whole ran from 18 May to 8 September 1565, by the dates in Wikipedia’s account, and ended with the island still in the Order’s hands.

Valletta was begun the next year on that peninsula, which the Malta Tourism Authority describes as arid rock rising steeply between two deep harbours, Marsamxett and the Grand Harbour. The city is named after its founder, Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette, and the Tourism Authority says its bastions, forts and cathedral were completed in 15 years. UNESCO inscribed the City of Valletta as a World Heritage Site in 1980, by Wikipedia’s account citing the World Heritage List.

The threads of this page meet inside it. The National Museum of Archaeology occupies the Auberge de Provence, a Knights’ building dating to 1571, and holds the Sleeping Lady from the Hypogeum, the figure known as the Venus of Malta and the colossal statue from Tarxien. Fort St Elmo, brought inside Valletta’s fortifications in 1689, took the first aerial bombardment of the islands on 11 June 1940 and now houses the National War Museum, which shows Malta’s George Cross.

A cart rut looks like a question with an obvious answer. Two grooves, a steady distance apart, running across a hillside: something with wheels went this way, many times, until the rock gave in.

The trouble starts when you try to finish the sentence. A typical Maltese rut is 10 to 35 centimetres deep, with 100 to 130 centimetres between the inside edges of a pair. At Misraħ Għar il-Kbir, in the limits of Siġġiewi near the Dingli Cliffs, pairs cross others or join them at junctions, which is why the site is known in English as Clapham Junction, after the busy London railway station; Wikipedia credits the nickname to the archaeologist David Trump, who wrote a book on the ruts in 2008. Whatever made the pair that runs on under the sea did so on ground that was dry at the time; the sea is higher now, or the land lower, and the tracks carry on underneath.

The most developed explanation is geomorphological. In 2008 Derek Mottershead, Alastair Pearson and Martin Schaefer, in the journal Antiquity, modelled the ruts as the product of two-wheeled carts with a gauge of about 1.40 metres carrying moderate loads. In wet weather, when the soft limestone is weakest, the wheels would cut into it progressively.

Their model also explains the junctions. As a pair of ruts deepened, the cart’s body would eventually scrape the rock between them, at a ground clearance they put at about 0.675 metres, and the driver would move over a few centimetres and begin wearing a new pair. A rut network, on this reading, is a record of traffic repeatedly abandoning worn-out lanes.

In a study published in 2022 in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Huw Groucutt measured the variability of the ruts. The typical Maltese rut is about 15 to 30 centimetres wide at the top, narrowing to 5 to 15 at the base, and 10 to 35 centimetres deep, with typically 100 to 130 centimetres between the inside edges of a pair.

Groucutt concluded that the ruts are fairly standardised, which may suggest a consistent age and function, and noted that what standardisation means in this setting is not clear. That is the state of the question: the measurements narrow the range of answers without choosing one.

Misraħ Għar il-Kbir lies in the limits of Siġġiewi, near the Dingli Cliffs and the Buskett woodland, on open, uneven rock. Ruts are also recorded at Busewdien, Naxxar, San Ġwann and Bidnija, and on Gozo. The Birżebbuġa ruts are on the shore of St George’s Bay in the south-east, near the remains at Borġ in-Nadur and the cave of Għar Dalam.