Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1488480
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 18 DECEMBER 2022 OPINION 11 work'? Reason I ask is that: when I showed the video to Prof. An- thony Bonanno (who has stud- ied Malta's temples for the bet- ter part of 50 years), around the first thing he pointed out was that: "Hancock makes a basic mis- take here. He doesn't distin- guish between two different types of stone. Hagar Qim is made up of blocks of Globege- rina Limestone […]. The exte- rior envelope of Ġgantija, on the other hand, is made from Coralline Limestone…" Among the many differences between the two is that Cor- alline is far more resistant to wind-and-water erosion, than the more 'crumbly' Globegeri- na (this much is evident even from the state of deterioration of Hagar Qim's megaliths). The stones of Ġgantija, on the other hand, may appear 'griz- zled', and 'weather-worn', to us today… but that's because (in Bonanno's own words): "That rugged, 'Swiss-cheese'-like ef- fect does not come from ero- sion; it's how the stones would originally have looked, even at the time when they were first quarried." This brings us to another in- accuracy, that – to be honest – doesn't even require any sci- entific knowledge to discern. To quote Bonanno once more, "the external walls appear to be very cleanly cut into squares, separated by straight, deep- ly-cut grooves: a bit like the Pyramids of Egypt, really." (To which I might add: "and not unlike Peru's Macchu Picchu, either"). Even a cursory glance at to- day's ruins, however, is enough to confirm that the stones were NOT 'cleanly cut into squares'; nor would they have appeared as 'polished', and 'sand- ed-down', as that. In other words: regardless whether the temples were built 6,000 years ago (as archaeolo- gists believe), or anywhere up to 20,000 years ago (as suggest- ed by Hancock)… one thing is certain: 'in its prime', Ġganti- ja would certainly NOT have even remotely resembled the high-rise edifice we see in 'An- cient Apocalypse'. In fact, the only 'accurate' thing about that image, is ar- guably the floorplan… which strongly suggests, to my mind, that the graphic designer who created it, took the outline of the existing ruins… and simply 'projected the walls upwards' (using his own vivid imagina- tion, to fill in all the missing details). Ah, but then… how far can you realistically 'project those walls upwards', before the en- tire edifice becomes unstable, and literally COLLAPSES? According to Hancock, the answer is easy (Ġgantija was 'as tall as a three-storey building', remember)? But once again: it's a little de- tail that the programme just throws at us, without any word of explanation (still less, verifi- cation). Now: consider how vastly all this contrasts, with the last time someone undertook a similar exercise (Dr Suzanne Psaila, whose 2012 PhD thesis took the form of a 'virtual re- construction of Haġar Qim'.) The first difference you will notice is that: unlike Han- cock, Psaila seems to have actually done some research. The shape, height and appear- ance of her reconstruction, we are told, was "based on a 5,000-year-old small model of a prehistoric building found at the Tarxien temples." That model is in turn one of several such 'miniatures', be- queathed to us by the same people who actually built the temples themselves (most of the others were retrieved form Ta' Haġrat); and, well, you'd sort of expect that the original architects would know a thing or two, about what their own designs actually looked like... wouldn't you? But guess what? None of those models represent a building that could have realis- tically stood 'three storeys tall'. In fact, Psalia's virtual model stood at only 8.5 metres, from floor-to-ceiling (rising to 11.4 metres, if you include a tall stone 'crest' that apparently once stood over the entrance): which corresponds to the height of a 'two-storey' build- ing, not a 'three-storey' one. Meanwhile, there was anoth- er aspect that went into Psaila's research (but evidently, not in- to Hancock's). In 2012, she told The Times that: "It's not simply a matter of drawing stones one on top of another: each stone is given all the dimensions and the weight – and the [comput- er] programme won't allow you to keep on building if the struc- ture can't take the weight." Did Hancock use the same software to test the durability of his own reconstruction, I wonder? Probably not: for rea- sons that become evident when you compare the two models themselves. As can be seen from the im- age: Psaila's 'Haġar Qim' is constructed on the principle of a 'corbelled dome': the same method we still use to build 'giren' (and 'igloos') to this day. It consists in a wide base, made from massive, load-bearing stones… on top of which, a cor- belled dome is compressed into position, by its own weight. Significantly, however: the outer wall does not rise higher than one storey, at most, before tapering off into its domed roof. (If it rose too much higher, the wall would not have been able to bear the roof's weight). Hancock's version of Ġganti- ja, on the other hand, rises ver- tical from the ground as high as around 36 feet (11 metres), be- fore suddenly (and inexplica- bly) smoothening out to form a partial, sloping – not 'domed' - roof: which, quite frankly, doesn't seem to be supported by any underlying structure… AT ALL. Simply put: if Hancock's re- construction really is 'accu- rate'… Ġgantija would almost certainly have collapsed, long before construction was even completed. (In other words: just as quick- ly as Hancock's entire Atlantis theory would certainly col- lapse, if people out there sub- jected it to the same scientific scrutiny, as 'conventional ar- chaeology')… Graham Hancock's 2022 reconstruction of Ggantija temples (left); and Suzanne Psaila's 2012 digital model of Hagar Qim (right)