Archaeology in Malta (5) : the earliest inhabitants

Abstract

Man crossed over from Sicily to Malta for the first time around 5,000 B.C. We cannot tell for certain what made him do so. It may well be that initially he was motivated by pure curiosity, to discover for himself what the speck of land was like that was visible on clear days from the heights around Ragusa: whether it was simply another island, larger or smaller than the homeland, or the nearest tip of another continent. Another possibility is that there were already stresses being felt on the agricultural land in Sicily and that these first explorers set out to see whether this new land was as hospitable as, hopefully even more so than, their own land. It could also be that new migratory waves continued to flow southwards into Sicily thus aggravating the problem of land-hunger. In this connection it should be remembered that the farming communities in Sicily at this time felt the need to protect their villages by deep ditches.