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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 20 NOVEMBER 2022 8 INTERVIEW Raphael Vassallo rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt Was Megalithic Malta the lost city of Atlantis? At a glance, the main conten- tions made by Graham Han- cock seem to challenge some of the more established inter- pretations of Maltese prehisto- ry. He suggests, for instance, that 'there is no reliable carbon dating' to prove the claim that the temples are around 6,000 years old; and he also pushes back the date of Malta's earli- est known human occupation, by around 4,000 years… all the way to 10,000 BC. First of all, however: how reliable is the evidence for the more 'orthodox' version of events? How do we really know, for in- stance, that the temples date back to, at most, 3,600BC? From an archaeological per- spective, there are two ways of dating prehistory. The first is the 'old' methodology, of ex- amining the material culture: the most significant of which is pottery. Pottery changes in style, ac- cording to the fashion of the time; and this makes it a good gauge of how cultures also de- velop, as they come into con- tact with each other. But that is relative chronology. It's a valid approach, for determining whether 'one culture came be- fore another', or vice versa. But material culture is best viewed when combined with other sci- entific dating methods: such as radio carbon-14 dating, which is scientifically accepted to be very accurate - within a margin of error of around 100 years - for anything between 10,000 years ago, and the present. So, how do we combine the two? It starts with the archaeo- logical excavation itself: which is why we are so finicky, and careful, when we go about dig- ging an archaeological site. First of all, it's very important to identify one stratigraphical layer, from another: especially, if the layers conform to estab- lished changes in pottery styles. Secondly, we are always very careful to examine the relation between the horizontal layers, and any vertical structures such as walls, or blocks of stone. For example: if a layer of earth abuts onto an upright stone, it means the layer must have come later. This is enough to safely conclude that the stone must have erected into that po- sition, before the layer which accumulated around it… This pre-empts a question I had about carbon-dating, in gener- al. Given that the process re- quires the presence of organic matter: how can it be used to accurately determine the age of a stone structure such as, say, Ggantija, or Hagar Qim? It can't, quite frankly. Some people make this mistake: say- ing from instance, that 'the stones have been carbon-dated'. But no: it's only carbonized bio- logical matter that can be car- bon-dated. And besides: even if it were possible to 'carbon-date stone'… what you'd get is the geological age of the stone it- self, and not of the structure it is part of. This is a mistake Graham Hancock himself once made, when he was in Malta at some time in the 1990s. He had inter- viewed me once, at the Tas-Silg excavation site; and at one point he asked me 'how old a certain particular stone was' – or 'rock', I can't exactly remember exact- ly, now - and I told him, 'Prob- ably, quite a few millions years old…'. If I'm not mistaken, he even included the detail in one of his books… I intended to ask this later, but: you've had encounters with Hancock before; and you've even featured as an interview subject, in one his earlier doc- umentaries… Yes; there is nothing really all that 'new' in what he's say- ing. He's been making the same claims for at least 30 years now; and others have been similar claims before him… How would you describe your personal relations – such that they are – with him? Well, on the few occasions we've met, he was always very cordial; not that I ever had any 'personal relations', as such. But of course, from a scientific point of view, he comes to what I consider to be the wrong con- clusions… That brings us back to the pre- cise age of Malta's megalithic temples. If I understood cor- rectly; that information comes not directly from carbon-dat- ing; but from an analysis of the material culture from the stratigraphical layers of the excavation site… It's a lot more complex than that, in practice: you also have to look at how the data all fits into the overall context. But otherwise, yes: and when you combine the material evidence, with other scientifically-ap- proved methods of testing… the consensus that emerges is that the culture that built the megalithic temples, flourished here between around 5,800BC, until around 2,200BC; and the temple-building phase, started around 3,600BC. This brings us to another of Hancock's contentions: i.e., that the islands were inhabited for much longer than that; and that the temple-building phase actually represented the last remnants of an ancient civi- lization that existed between Malta and Sicily at the end of the last Ice Age (only to be sub- merged by rising sea-levels). Judging by popular reactions so far, this view has been very well received. Are you con- cerned that such interpreta- tions may be more 'attractive', to ordinary viewers, than the seemingly 'boring' scientific consensus? Well, I suppose that – from the point of view of ordinary peo- ple, watching that kind of pro- gramme – the idea of a 'lost civi- lisation', or an 'ancient mystery', A recent Netf lix series entitled 'Ancient Apocalypse' has reignited an equally ancient controversy: by suggesting that megalithic temples such as Ggantija, may actually be the remnants of a 10,000-year old 'lost civilization' (possibly, the mythical Atlantis). But Professor ANTHONY BONANNO, of the University's Archaeology department, argues that the truth is probably less fanciful - but more interesting - than that PHOTO: JAMES BIANCHI / MALTATODAY