Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1098850
15 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 31 MARCH 2019 INTERVIEW Might I suggest a possibility? In the Middle Ages, most of the towns and villages – especially in Gozo – tended to be inland, away from the sea, and well- fortified. The reason was, naturally, piracy. I somehow doubt piracy would have been the issue in 3,600BC… but could there have been a similar threat from overseas? Does the bone record reveal any indication of violence, for instance… possibly warfare? The bones don't tell us any- thing about violence at all. There were injuries, certainly... but they tend to be of the kind that are likelier caused by accidents. They certainly led very physical- ly-active lives: just think about the difficulty in transporting and erecting those huge megaliths, when building temples… And I imagine they didn't have the equivalent of an Occupational Health and Safety Authority, either…. Not likely, no! In fact, we do have many examples of inju- ries… mostly bone fractures… that could be easily attributed to accidents that would today be described as 'occupational'. In some cases, the injuries would have been horrific, too: for in- stance, a femur literally snapped in half... Do you exclude that as possible evidence of violence, though? Yes, completely. Most of these accidents are more compat- ible with things like falls, and so on. But, more interestingly, we also have cases of injuries which were evidently treated; injuries which healed, even though – by their nature – they couldn't have healed alone, and would probably have been fatal otherwise. Where, for instance, there was a massive break, or multiple breaks, in a femur… they seem to have been cared for. And we even have evidence of interventions within the mouth… So they did at least have a healthcare system of sorts… Yes, it seems they did. To some degree at least, they took care of their sick and injured. There may even have been people dedicated specifically to the role of tend- ing the sick; and also, it seems, to looking after the elderly. For in- stance, there has always been the presumption that people didn't live long in prehistory; that they rarely exceeded the age of 30 or 40. Today, I can tell you that we have evidence of people living beyond the age of menopause, and sometimes to a ripe old age. Naturally, it wouldn't be as old as what would today be considered 'old age'… To be fair, that's also true of just a few decades ago… Precisely. But we do have evi- dence that these people were living longish lives. And this re- inforces the idea that they must have taken care of their sick; and that there must have been some of kind of system in place to take care of the elderly or in- firm. All this points towards a certain level of cultural sophistication. Presumably, a culture which takes care of its sick would also have had a (naturally unwritten) code of conduct… which in turn implies some form of power structure (family-based, presumably?) to enforce conviviality. Is it possible to estimate how their society was ordered? Does, for instance, the obsession with the 'female form' in Neolithic art possibly reflect a matriarchal culture? What I can tell you from the bones – and even more so, from the burial sites – is that both men and women were buried in the same way at the Xaghra Circle, and even in other tombs of the same period. That is to say, curled up in foetal position, on one's side. So we can safely say that men and women were treated equally… in death. But in life? It's very difficult to say, unfortunately. For one thing, most of the bones retrieved from the Xaghra Circle did not come from complete skeletons. We do have a few complete skeletons… enough to give an indication of the burial rites and customs. But most are disarticulated bones. Just like we do today, they would have buried their dead according to their customs… then later, they would disinter the decomposed remains and transfer them somewhere else, to make space. That, at least, is one reason for the disarticula- tion. There may have been oth- ers. When the Circle was exca- vated, it was observed that some bones had been 'organised': for instance, long bones placed to one side, skulls to another. Ex- actly why they did this can only be guessed; but it could have been for ritualistic purposes. Whatever the case, it confirms that this culture had a close rap- port with their dead. Both the Xaghra Circle and the Hypo- geum were used for community gatherings, which strongly sug- gest that rites and rituals would have taken place there. Exactly what these rituals were, or how they unfolded, is something we don't have precise answers for as yet. Given that there are so many unanswered – possibly unanswerable – questions, it is inevitable that some people would attempt to fill in the gaps. There is, in fact, a whole network of conspiracy theories connected to Malta's prehistoric culture. Some have identified Malta as the lost city of Atlantis; others argue that the Hypogeum's elongated skulls are evidence of 'alien origins'. As a scientist, how do you react to such theories? I have to admit it is a bit hurt- ful, in a way. The people we are talking about were humans like us. There were differences, of course. I mentioned how much tougher they must have been, for instance. But these are su- perficial matters. In evolution- ary terms, they were Homo Sapiens, like us. They had the same brain capacity: they were capable of thinking, and plan- ning ahead. It's no mystery that human beings, who lived so many millennia ago, would have designed and built com- plex stone structures, with the technology that was avail- able to them. Yet to hear them talked about as 'aliens'… I sup- pose, to be fair, that is partly our fault, for not relaying enough information out there and the soon to be published studies of FRAGSUS and others will only encourage more education lo- cally and internationally on the prehistoric period… Surely, however, some of the claims must be difficult to dispute, given the lack of certainty. The elongated skulls, for instance… what is the accepted archaeological explanation for this phenomenon? [Shrugs] They are pretty nor- mal crania. They are actually really, really normal. But it's very easy to take a photo from a certain angle, and make them look 'elongated'… and the me- dia – or should I say technol- ogy in general, because there's also the social media – doesn't always help. Recently I ran a Google search on some of these images, claiming to be 'skulls from Hal Saflieni'. And most of the images that came up on my screen were not the same skulls from Hal Saflieni. Yet there they were, captioned as 'from Hal Sa- flieni, Malta'… So it's not even true that it was the result of neonatal skull- binding? No. I assure you, they are re- ally quite ordinary, human skulls. I've seen bound skulls, on display in museums at Oxford. They come mostly from Africa, where the tradition still exists to this day. They don't look any- thing like the Hal Saflieni skulls. Bear in mind that the human cranium differs from individual to individual anyway, and even geographically. It is sometimes even possible to tell where a skull originated from, on the basis of certain markers. A skull from Africa will differ slightly from a skull from Asia or Eu- rope, for instance. The Hal Sa- flieni skulls are a bit diverse; and we see the same also in Xaghra. And while it may be possible that people from this period did 'modify' parts of their bodies to beautify themselves – just like they wore jewellery – there is no evidence of skull-binding… and there is certainly no evidence that those people were anything but human. our distant past PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES BIANCHI