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The real prehistoric religion of Malta by NOEL GRIMA Forget the goddess theory, which you hear every tourist guide trying to explain the huge statues at the National Museum of Archaeology or while touring Hagar Qim. That may not have been the original religion of Malta. This was the startling starting point in a lecture “Ritual, Space and Structure in Prehistoric Malta and Gozo: New Observations on Old Matters”, given by Dr Caroline Malone, co-director, Xaghra Stone Circle excavation during the recent Heritage Malta international conference held at the Grand Hotel in Gozo. Dr Malone is senior tutor at Hughes...

The ancient Temple People civilization of Malta did not suffer invasions, widespread disease or famine, past research has shown. Why their culture died is a mystery. A large team of researchers is carrying out studies to determine why the Temple People’s civilization on the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo ended. The Temple People had an incredibly rich culture with unique art, stone temples and structures, huge burial sites and advanced agriculture going back to 4000 BC and ending around 2900 BC. The stone structures on the island are among the oldest free-standing stone structures in history, Malta Today says...

5,600 years ago, patient Stone Age laborers gouged emptiness from solid living rock, fashioning a complex three-level interior that contains astounding textural detail. Covering a total of about 5,400 square feet, with its levels extending down about 35 feet, the Hypogeum was discovered by accident in 1902 near the center of the town of Paola... For about a 1,000-year span, the Hypogeum served as a necropolis, a city of the dead that eventually housed the remains of about 7,000 people. It was one of many megalithic structures strewn across Malta, built by a complex Neolithic culture that mysteriously disappeared around...

An Etruscan hypogeum which is 'considered exceptional within the western Mediterranean' has just been discovered within this ancient cemetery on Corsica... which is believed to date all the way back to between the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. According to Forbes, this burial ground in southern Aléria was first spotted after a new home was slated to be built. However, it was swiftly discovered that this was already the enormous home to the many people who had been buried here thousands of years ago. ...at one point in time it was much larger, with a history that stretches straight back...

...Northern Italy's Friuli-Venezia Giulia... is located in the Eastern Alps, near Slovenia, and used to be an important regional power. Today, it is a quaint town, and many tourists are attracted to it as a medieval center. Julius Caesar founded Cividale in 50 B.C. The area had already been settled by the Veneti and Celts, but it was after the destruction of Aquileia and Iulium Carnicum that the town became known as Cividale and became the principal town of Friuli. Within Cividale del Friuli is the Celtic Hypogeum -- a subterranean structure created for an unknown purpose. The Celtic Hypogeum...

After nearly 30 years, a team of archaeologists will be returning once again to the site of So na Cacana on the island of Menorca, Balearic Islands, Spain, to renew investigations of a prehistoric sanctuary complex that archaeologists believe represented the remains of the Talaiotic Culture , a prehistoric culture that flourished, particularly on the islands of Majorca and Menorca, during the 1st Millenium BCE... The ancient settlement remains are located about six km away from the municipality of Alaior. The site features a tower-like monument resembling a large rectangular talaiot (Bronze Age megalithic structure) at the highest point of...