[gleeaikin]

Graham Hancock has a lot to say on the underwater prospects for exploration around Malta, as well as some of his experiences with Maltese authorities. He also points out that the magaliths must have been developed when Malta had a much larger land area to support the population.

Apparently when one of the undergound temples was opened, there were about 7,000 skeletons, almost all of which were destroyed by the government. What a terrible loss.

[Fred Nerks]

These oxen were believed to be descended from a sub species of the extinct bos longifrons...

OXEN! The Minoans were OX LEAPING!

[Fred Nerks]

Malta is a platform, an elevation of the sea floor that has showed its want to immerse more than once. Thirty-five pre-historic temples distributed on the two major islands, Malta and Gozo and many others actually submerged by the sea, make one think of a catastrophe that must have happened here around 3000-2500 B.C., something that left its sign. Steep reefs falling vertically to the sea, contrarily to the more sloping northern shore, form the southern coast of Malta, the Dingli Cliffs. It's as if the island's major axis rotated around itself, submerging most of the coast that faces Sicily.

[SunkenCiv]

Apparently when one of the undergound temples was opened, there were about 7,000 skeletons, almost all of which were destroyed by the government.

I wonder if there's a source for that info? Hancock isn't 100 per cent reliable (he said, with a hint of irony). Some years ago, on another forum, someone claimed that Mussolini's archaeologists found a Roman-Empire-era mass grave which somehow still had loads of flesh in it, and had to be hastily recovered because it all started to rot.

[Fred Nerks]

Maybe the origin of the thousands of skeletons story:

http://www.victorborg.com/html/stones_of_the_gods.html

‘...I visited Joe Attard, a Maltese self-taught historian, to find out how he made a series of archeological discoveries. “Inspiration?” he mused. “No. Hard work and an intuition developed by years of study.” In the 1970’s Attard became obsessed with an archeological treasure hunt for a suspected underground burial shrine. He slogged through the diaries and accounts of travelers in Malta in earlier centuries. He interrogated farmers. He analyzed folk tales and legends. He studied old landscape paintings. And he combed the countryside for traces of megaliths and pottery shreds. Five years later he stumbled on the Xaghra Stone Circle, an underground burial shrine that yielded thousands of skeletons and piece of art during excavations in the nineties’...’

See ‘Gozo Circle’ link and images in previous post.