FIRST EDITION: Malta – Ancient Peoples and Places By J.D. Evans

On the tiny Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo are to be found some of the most fascinating and impressive pre-historic monuments in Europe, the great megalithic temples. These were built by the earliest inhabitants of those islands nearly 4000 years ago for the strange and elaborate rituals of their religion, which seems to have blended ancestor-worship with the cult of a fertility deity. This book tells the story of these earliest Maltese people as revealed by the latest researches. Coming to Malta about the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C. from nearby Sicily, the first colonists were primitive farmers with a poor culture of Neolithic type. In their new home they prospered and developed their remarkable and individual culture undisturbed over several centuries. Later their culture was strongly influenced by the brilliant Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations of Greece and Crete. The late temples are wonderful pieces of architecture. Constructed of stones often weighing many tons each, they were filled with remarkable and often beautiful carvings in stone. Many of these have survived and have been recovered during excavations. The achievement of Malta’s ancient islanders is all the more extraordinary when one considers that these people never had the use of metal tools