The following are compilations of data obtained from the Internet.  I haven’t played around with the grammar, and I’ve added some of my own data but only in relation to dates; and author’s comments.  The data, wherever possible is supported by links to some relevant web sites:

Maltese Prehistory

A Brief Introduction

It is thought that man arrived on the islands around the year 5200 BC.  According to some scholars the first ‘Neolithic’ culture shows great affinity to that of Monte Kronio in Sicily and later in at least one location (i.e. the Mixta Caves in Gozo (Dr David Trump WWW.GOZO.GOV.MT/) the local culture appears to have had contacts with the eastern Sicilian cultures of the Middle Neolithic previously grouped under the STENTINELLO CULTURE.

The earliest people on the islands, after an initial period of seasonal utilisation of the archipelago's resources, eventually established themselves in cave and open dwellings and developed into what was later called the GharDalam culture.  They grew barley, wheat and lentil, practised fishing and supplemented their food with hunting. Around seven hundred years later this culture evolved into the Grey Skorba culture.  This in itself lasted on the islands for only about a century after which the Maltese were influenced by another culture (or possibly a continuation of the Grey Skorba?). Extending into the Italian Peninsula, eastern Sicily and the Aeolian islands, this culture, the Red Skorba is evidenced at the site of Skorba; defined by monochrome red pottery, which feature in the last Maltese ‘Neolithic’ culture before the first wave of the European ‘Copper Age’ (Temple Period 4,100 – 3,800 and 3,800 to 2,500 BC), that melded into the ‘Bronze Age’ (2,500 – 700 BC) culture that altered cultural traits for ever. 

Author’s comments: Interestingly, the following people who came to the island archipelago are said to be the Phoenicians; apparently these people in a phase knows as the Borg in-Nadur phases intermingled effortlessly with the existing ‘Bronze Age’ population; their transition was peaceful apparently.  They brought with them their own gods (p38 from Malta; Its Archaeology and History). This period marks the beginnings of the ‘Historic’ period; from here the rest is History.

The Zebbug and Mgarr phases span the first eight hundred years of the Temple Period, but have not yielded any Temple remains. It is however during these two phases that the inhabitants managed to provide food surplus; essential to sustain a healthy community.  The soils on Malta are fertile and red coloured.  In time agricultural surplus (inevitably) allowed people to take leadership in ritual and community affairs, thus providing the seeds for social change that shaped later prehistory, namely the Bronze Age. 

Author’s comments: A rich and fertile sea surrounds The Maltese Archipelago, and all the cultures that shared in this bounty allowed cultural exchange and later, commercial contact to take place with all the countries bordering the Mediterranean. 

Author’s comments: The Maltese Archipelago is said to have evolved internally but it is without doubt, a culture that, even though its earliest evolution might have been separate, the nature of where it is situated would have almost certainly involved considerable cultural exchange from as far afield as Greece, the Greek Islands and the Near East. 

The TEMPLE period link takes you to Geocities.com. This website is useful because it doesn’t interpret too much, and instead provides a useful background with some photos too.

Beginning in the middle of the fourth millennium BC, the Neolithic people on the Maltese archipelago involved themselves in the construction of places of cult, that remain to date, unparalleled elsewhere in the world.  Each of the forty-two Maltese Temples, with its particular plan belongs to a group of structures that claim to be one of the earliest achievements of mankind.

In the book Before Civilization, Sir Colin Renfrew declares that the "earliest architecturally conceived exterior in the world" is probably the facade of the Ggantija Temples on the island of Gozo.  This same temple claims to be the earliest free-standing structure in the world. On mainland Malta, the temples at Hagar Qim, possess the "earliest use of dressed stone” in human prehistory, while the colossal STATUE in the Western temple at Tarxien was probably unique for its size at the time.

Temples show a development in form, commencing as niche like spaces gathered around an irregular court and culminating in a symmetrical structure with three pair of apses grouped around a common axis.  This change in the temples' structure parallels the increasing complexity of the Maltese Temple Period society.

After collapse of the Temple culture Malta comes to fall part, albeit late, of the Mediterranean Bronze Age by occupying the south-western tip of a cultural arc which spanned from the Aegean through the Puglia region in Italy and Western Sicily.  Evidence for this cultural migration is provided by the affinity of early Maltese Bronze Age pottery with Protohelladic (Aegean) and Capo Graziano (Aeolian) styles. Bossed bone plaques and clay anchors are also found across this region, while only Puglia and Malta seem to have the remains of the characteristic dolmen of this cultural phenomenon.  The first Maltese Bronze Age culture namely that of Tarxien Cemetery is mostly known for its funerary remains. Traced back to this culture are four types of burial monuments, namely ritualised megalithic temples, menhir, cairns and DOLMENS.

Influence, and possibly migration, from western Sicilian cultures resulted in the second local Bronze Age culture, named after the type-site at Borg in-Nadur. These people after a transient coexistence with the Tarxien Cemetery people are soon characterized by SETTLEMENT patterns that show preoccupation with defence and security.  The last two centuries of Maltese Bronze Age bring with them the Bahrija folk, who probably occupied areas in western Malta.  At around the middle of the seventh century B.C., Malta becomes part of the PHOENICIAN world through its strategic position in Mediterranean trade routes.

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