Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1469874
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 JUNE 2022 OPINION 10 Raphael Vassallo OPINION Of 'Prehistoric Boobs, and Megalithic Dicks'… AS a general rule, I try to avoid using this column to 'answer' articles by other columnists: if nothing else, because I am a firm believer in Free Speech, as defined by Italian comic genius Antonio de Curtis (aka Toto): 'La democrazia significa che og- nuno puo' dire tutte le fesserie che vuole!' [Loose translation: 'Democracy means that every- one is free to say just as much bullshit as they like!'] And having myself exemplified that sacrosanct principle, on so many past occasions – I mean: just look at all the 'fesserie' I've written over the years, for crying out loud! – I feel it would be a lit- tle inappropriate, on my part, to suddenly 'object to the bullshit of others'. But then again, I will very short- ly be breaking that little rule of mine: specifically, to counter to a recent op-ed article by Kristina Chetcuti, entitled 'Inbreeding is our undoing' (Times, 29 May). Partly because I feel that some of the 'fesserie' it contains are just too utterly outrageous, to realistically go unanswered… … but partly also because – and this may come as a small surprise – I happen to share Kristina's fascination with the culture that flourished on these islands, in the Neolithic period; and from my own (admittedly amateur) investigations into the same questions… it looks to me as though Kristina Chetcuti is not entirely WRONG, in at least some of her basic assumptions. It's more that she departs from a premise that is 'possibly cor- rect' – and I stress 'possibly', because the simple truth is that we don't really know very much at all, about the 'social norms of Neolithic Malta' – but then, reaches conclusions that not only belong firmly to the fantas- tical… but to a fantasy that tells us infinitely more about Maltese social life today (and, more spe- cifically, about the author's own prejudices in that regard). But with all that out of the way: let's dive right into it, shall we? And we may as well start from the beginning, where Kristina argues that: "[Around 3,600BC] the island was inhabited by the most open-minded people ever to grace our lands. ey were tall, handsome, healthy and su- premely intelligent until… they were replaced by shorter, uglier and unhealthy versions of them- selves." And there, right off the bat, you can already see traces of that same pattern. For on one lev- el, the factual assertions in that paragraph are broadly correct. ere is a wealth of evidence to confirm that this island's in- habitants, some 6,000 years ago, were not only 'taller' and 'much healthier' than their descendants around a millennium later… but also, than most other contempo- rary societies in other parts of the Mediterranean (the ones we know about, anyway). Here, of course, we must close an eye at the 'Great Civilisations' that were concurrently emerging in places like Egypt and (even earlier) the Fertile Crescent… but there can be no doubt that the Maltese temple-builders did indeed enjoy a much higher standard of living (and certain- ly, lived much longer lives) than other small agrarian communi- ties that existed on the European mainland at the time. And yes: even before the latest scientific study that inspired this article – you know: the one that "found out that the Maltese peo- ple had shrunk in stature, were suffering from food scarcity, […] and there was a lot of inbreed- ing", etc. – we already knew that this remarkable culture, which had flourished for the better part of almost 2,000 years, had fallen into decline by the end of the second millennium BC. Which is not to say, of course, that this latest study doesn't actually 'reveal anything new': if nothing else, we now have a much clearer picture of what this gradual deterioration would have 'looked' and 'felt' like, so to speak… … but the one thing it certain- ly doesn't do (nor even CAN do, for that matter) is shed any light whatsoever, on what might have actually 'gone on in those peo- ple's minds': at any point at all, throughout their entire 2,000- year existence. Nor does it even answer any of the more (theoretically) 'an- swerable' questions, either: such as, how was their society struc- tured? What sort of social behaviour was considered 'permissible', or not? And, least of all, what sort of 'social prejudices' – or 'gender stereotypes' – did these people develop, over the course of the millennia? To answer those questions, I'm afraid you really do have to in- vent a time-machine, and travel back 6,000 years into the past. And as Kristina Chetcuti already informed us that she HASN'T actually done that, yet… perhaps she may wish to explain exact- ly how she can assert (and with such authority, too!) that these people were: 'open-minded'; 'egalitarian'; and – even more bizarrely - that 'no one cared about appearances. It was irrel- evant whether you had a pair of boobs or a dick…" Hmm. Let's close an eye, for now, at the minor detail that Kristina herself goes on to shat- ter this illusion, just a few lines further on (where she explains how these people – who didn't 'care about appearances', re- member? – also "took pride in grooming, plaited their hair in different styles, and wore differ- ent kinds of jewellery…") But before we even get there: how the heck does she even KNOW any of this, anyway? And what sort of 'evidence' is she basing these assumptions on? Certainly, it cannot be 'the con- tents of the National Museum of Archaeology': which – when it comes to the Neolithic section, at any rate – could almost be mistaken for an unadulterated cache of 'Prehistoric Porn'. Seriously, though: if it's not 'fat ladies with unfeasibly large breasts' – which, by the way, also tells us something about how aesthetic biases have likewise evolved, in the meantime – it's 'upright monoliths with more than a passing resemblance to erect phalli'… Odd, isn't it, how a culture which considered 'boobs and dicks' to be so utterly 'irrelevant', would also bequeath to us an ar- tistic legacy consisting chiefly (if not exclusively) of… um… 'Pre- historic Boobs, and Megalithic Dicks'? Oh well, I guess it's just anoth- er 'ancient mystery', to add to all the rest... But the real problem is another. Like I said before, Kristina and I share a common interest in this matter. And my own research led me to ask an expert – os- teo-archaeologist Dr Bernadette Mercieca-Spiteri – more or less the same question, back in 2019. is was her reply: "What I can tell you from the bones – and even more so, from the buri- al 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. at is to say, curled up in foetal position, on one's side. So we can safely say that men and women were treated equal- ly… in death. But in life? It's very difficult to say, unfortunately…" Now: to be fair, none of that adds up to an outright contra- diction of Kristina's 'egalitarian' vision. All it means is that there is simply not enough material evidence, for anyone - not even the most seasoned experts in the field – to confidently supply any answers. (And still less, to make such astonishingly bald af- firmations, as: "No one pointed at women and said: 'Your job is to do housework and raise the children, if not, you're a waste of space on earth…') But this only brings me to the truly infuriating part (indeed, the only reason I'm even bother- ing to reply in the first place): be- cause again, the issue here is not so much that Kristina Chetcuti's reconstruction of Neolithic Mal- ta is clearly 'fanciful' (and there- fore, by definition, also 'wrong' or 'incorrect'…) … quite the contrary, in fact: it's that, at a certain level – that is to say: long before we get to the