The Forgotten Seafarers of the Ancient Mediterranean [12:41]

Transcript

Chapter 1: Seafaring in the Ancient Mediterranean

The Odyssey tells us that the ancient Mediterranean was a highly interconnected but dangerous maritime world where travel and cultural exchange were essential to life. But how far back do these seafaring capabilities in the region go? This is a trickier question than it seems. Direct evidence of ancient sea travel is hard to come by because the vessels themselves mostly have not survived. However, indirect evidence such as the fact that prehistoric people lived on islands clearly shows they must have got there by boat. They certainly didn’t fly. But just how far could prehistoric people travel by boat? What navigation techniques did they use? And were they occasional or frequent maritime travelers?

A new study looks at a particular conundrum that’s arisen from a discovery on the Mediterranean islands of Malta. The excavation of a cave pushed the earliest human occupation of the islands back by 2,500 years to the Mesolithic. This was unexpected and strange for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Malta was already an island at that time, having been previously connected to Sicily by a land bridge during the Ice Age, and the distance to reach it by boat was not insignificant.

Chapter 2: Malta’s Chronological Framework

Secondly, navigating to Malta, a low-lying archipelago lacking in major geological landmarks, would not have been easy. Thirdly, the Maltese islands are small, so it was thought that farming had to be necessary before long-term survival was possible there. Yet, the Mesolithic occupation lasted 1,000 years. So, how did these people and their descendants survive? Let’s dive into this conundrum and see what we can find out.

As dating techniques have improved and new excavations have revealed more evidence from Neolithic and Bronze Age sites, our understanding of Malta’s prehistoric chronology has become increasingly refined. Up until recently, the prehistoric record looks something like this: Around 6,000 B.C.E., the first Neolithic farmers arrived in the Maltese islands. Later on, they built mudbrick dwellings on stone foundations, used pottery similar to that found in Sicily and Calabria, and displayed signs of ritual activity. At some point, however, they abandoned the islands. Then, around 1,000 years later, people returned, and this new culture started off by carving simple rock-cut tombs. This would become known as the temple period.

These were the people who evolved to build Malta’s extraordinary megalithic monuments, massive abidal temples that still can be seen in the landscape today. They carved elaborate statues and figurines and created a world rich in symbolism, ritual, and ceremony. The transitional thermy phase signaled the beginning of the Bronze Age. But around 2200 B.C.E., at roughly the same time as the climatic disruption known as the 4.2 kiloyear event that affected societies across the Mediterranean, Malta appears to have been abandoned once again. This gap in the archaeological record is known as the third millennium hiatus.

After this, the Bronze Age truly began with some incredible sites. Although between the Tarin cemetery and Bourjin Nadur phases, the islands appeared to have been abandoned once again. So until recently, this was the basic story of prehistoric Malta: the arrival of early Neolithic farmers followed by several phases of settlement and abandonment, including the incredible period of megalith building. These periods of abandonment were probably driven by several factors, not least of which could have been the difficult conditions for survival on small islands with limited resources, especially during times of bad weather.

Chapter 3: The Discovery That Changed Malta’s Prehistory

Now, let’s rewind. We now know that the earliest farmers were not the first humans in tow. Around 8,500 years ago, hunter-gatherers were living in the Latinia cave in the far north of Malta. And rather interestingly, the evidence suggests that this megalithic occupation remained there for around 1,000 years. Excavations at Lakia cave took place between 2021 and 2023 and revealed several megalithic occupation layers containing hearths, animal remains, and stone tools. The faunal assemblages are dominated by red deer, birds, and marine gastropods, giving us a glimpse into a very different way of life from that of the farmers who arrived later. These people hunted, fished, and gathered what they could from their environment. Their diet contrasts sharply with that of the Neolithic communities that followed, who cultivated crops, kept domesticated animals, and appear to have made remarkably little use of marine resources.

I’ve talked about this in the past. Even though the Maltese islands only cover 316 km, meaning the sea is easily accessible, there’s not much evidence that the temple people ate fish or other marine fauna. This may have been because of their belief system. It’s not really clear from the archaeological record, but these earlier hunter-gatherers definitely exploited their coastal location. So, how did these megalithic people get to Malta in the first place? And once they arrived, how did they manage to survive on these small islands for 1,000 years?

The paper “Life on the Edge: Megalithic Population Size and Viability on Malta” examines whether hunter-gatherers could have maintained a permanent population on the islands during the Mesolithic period 8,500 years ago. The authors combine archaeological evidence with models of past sea levels, land area, climate, environmental productivity, population density, and the distances required for sea travel. Now, of course, Malta lies in the central Mediterranean, so it wasn’t covered by ice during the Ice Age, but the landscape looked very different from today. During the last glacial maximum, sea levels were much lower, and Malta was connected to Sicily by a land bridge. The climate was also considerably wetter between around 15,000 and 14,200 years ago. Rising sea levels progressively narrowed this land connection before it disappeared completely a few hundred years later. The exact timing can be argued, but there’s no doubt that the land bridge was gone by 12,900 years ago.

Continued sea level rise eventually separated Malta into the three main islands we know today: Malta, Gozo, and Camino. The Mesolithic people of Latinia cave lived there thousands of years after the land bridge had disappeared. By around 8,500 years ago, Malta had been an island for several millennia, and the shortest crossing to Sicily was around 80 km. So, it’s unlikely that an Ice Age population walked across the land bridge, became stranded as the sea level rose, with their descendants somehow surviving in isolation until the Mesolithic. If the people at Latinia were descendants of earlier populations, their ancestors would have had to survive on Malta for thousands of years. And if they weren’t, then there is only one other possibility: they had to have arrived there by sea.

The study also modeled how large a hunter-gatherer population the Maltese islands could realistically have supported during the Mesolithic. These results put the maximum somewhere between 144 and 170 people. Enough for a population to survive in the short term, but far too small, the researchers argue, to remain viable over many generations. Their models suggest that a population of at least 1,000 people would have been needed for long-term survival. If that is correct, then the people living at Latinia could not have been completely isolated. They must have maintained connections with communities elsewhere, most likely through repeated sea crossings to Sicily, allowing them to exchange people and resources.

The researchers therefore suggest that the Mesolithic occupation of Malta may have been seasonal, forming part of a much larger seafaring hunter-gathering network rather than representing a permanently isolated population. And there is evidence that these connections may have extended much further across the Mediterranean. The presence of ancestry associated with European hunter-gatherers in epipaleolithic communities in Tunisia suggests that people were capable of making remarkably long-distance journeys across the Mediterranean long before the arrival of farming.

Chapter 4: Could They Really Survive on Malta?

One of the biggest research projects to investigate prehistoric Malta was Fragsus, a 5-year interdisciplinary project that brought together archaeologists, environmental scientists, and specialists. It combined archaeology, radiocarbon dating, human remains, pollen, soils, and climate evidence to reconstruct how Malta’s prehistoric communities lived, adapted to their environment, and ultimately changed or collapsed. The project resulted in three major monographs: Temple Landscapes, Temple Places, and Temple People. An interesting second chapter in Temple Places examined the relationships between Malta’s megalithic sites as well as previous research into the layout and positioning of the temples. Interestingly, there seems to be little evidence that the temples were deliberately positioned to be close to the sea or to provide views of it. However, the internal layout of the temples suggests that different spaces had different functions, with some areas deliberately screened from others. Combined with the imagery found within the temples, researchers suggest that these monuments may have functioned as, and I quote, “gateways between sea and land.” But could the temples have had a more direct connection with navigation?

Chapter 5: How Did They Navigate the Mediterranean?

A recent study by Fabio Silva and Lum Stalin investigated whether the entrances of Malta’s prehistoric temples were deliberately oriented towards particular points on the horizon, including the rising and setting positions of stars. The authors propose that some of these stars may have been important for astro-navigation, potentially helping people navigate across the central Mediterranean. They go further, suggesting that the temples may have served alongside their social and ritual functions as places where young seafarers learned to recognize important navigational stars. They even propose that some of the sunken areas within the temples may have held water, perhaps creating a symbolic representation of the sea.

There is a navigational problem here. When traveling from Malta towards Sicily, Mount Etna provides a spectacular natural landmark. But when approaching Malta, there are far fewer obvious landmarks to guide you. Perhaps under those circumstances, navigating by the stars could have been particularly useful. But there is an assumption behind this idea that Neolithic people were making these long-distance sea crossings regularly enough for sophisticated navigational knowledge to be necessary. And that’s something we simply don’t know. They certainly traveled by sea to get to Malta in the first place. And obsidian has been found at temple sites which had to have come from other parts of the Mediterranean since Malta is not volcanic. So at least some travel must have taken place, but it didn’t necessarily have to be a regular thing for survival.

The situation is rather different for the Mesolithic people of Latinia. Their tiny population could not, according to the modeling, have survived in isolation for 1,000 years. Regular contact with neighboring islands or mainland communities was essential for their survival.

So, what do you all think? I have no navigational skills, and I can’t even make my lilo cross a small swimming pool in the right direction. An 80 km crossing with currents and sea creatures and no modern technology would freak me out. But ancient people were more in tune with their environment. So I can imagine such distances were quite achievable even if we don’t know exactly how they navigated or what their canoes looked like since Sicily is so resource-rich and so massive.

I do wonder why, though, such groups would travel to Malta on a seasonal or repetitive basis. The only thing I can think of is maybe Malta was the party island. Maybe Malta was the Ibiza of the Mesolithic. What do you think? Let me know in the comments. Thank you for watching, and I’ll see you next time.

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