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The Megalithic Temples of Malta - Ep 143
1.8k Plays6 months ago
Malta is an island in the Mediterranean that is super far away from everything else in the Mediterranean. On this island, there are some temples that were made over five thousand years ago by the farmers that lived on the island. They used some pretty big stones to make them. There is also a cave there where they buried some bodies.
I would label this as “super easy to understand.” Not everyone feels like I do. Prepare yourself for fake dates, alignments that don’t align to anything, and an entire classroom of children that not only disappeared, but never existed in the first place…
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/pseudo/143
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Transcript
Introduction to Pseudo-Archaeology Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You are now entering the pseudo-archaeology podcast, a show that uncovers what's fact, what's fake, and what's fun in the crazy world of pseudo-archaeology.
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the pseudo archaeology podcast episode one hundred and forty three. I am your host, Dr. Andrew Kinkella.
The Megalithic Temples of Malta
00:00:30
Speaker
And tonight the megalithic temples of Malta. Were they built by giants? No, of course they weren't because giants wouldn't do that. I think the giant should have unionized, you know, and been like, you know, I'm tired of you people using me for my superior size and strength.
00:00:52
Speaker
And I am not doing it. So, yeah, here we are, my friends, doing the megalithic temples of Malta, which I think are these are cool, man. These are these are pretty unique. And and why am I doing this? Why am I choosing the megalith of Malta this time? And it's because it's because, friends, I'm cheating. I'm cheating. You know, you're.
00:01:21
Speaker
I know you would expect nothing more and nothing less from me than just being another cheater. And what do I mean by that? So every so often, because I'm like a TV star.
00:01:36
Speaker
I'll do these little like documentary TV shows, right? Sometimes they're on like the science channel. Sometimes they're on like the history channel. Sometimes they're on National Geographic. They're kind of everywhere. I may have told this story before. I can't remember because I'm just not putting enough effort in. I need to write this down. But anyway, I.
00:01:59
Speaker
I would say for a handful of days out of my year, I work on these various TV shows. They basically call me up because they need what's called an expert presenter. Right. And I come in and if you guys have seen any of these kind of shows before, you know how this goes. It's like they'll have some sort of host.
00:02:17
Speaker
And they'll talk about something. We'll talk about the ancient Maya and then they cut to sort of this person, a talking head, basically, who will be like, you see the ancient Maya pre classic period started in 1800 B.C., right? That kind of thing. I'm one of those guys.
00:02:32
Speaker
And so recently I did some work for a TV show, which I have no idea when it will be out. I have no idea if they will cut me entirely behind the scenes of those talking heads, those expert presenter people.
00:02:48
Speaker
It's it's kind of funny because they they basically give you a call and you shoot for a day, you know, maybe two days. It just depends. And they basically give you a I guess what we could call a script, but.
00:03:03
Speaker
It's much more basic than that, right? It's not it's not where I memorize lines or something. It's usually kind of a beat sheet where it's like, OK, for this shoot, we're going to talk about these six topics, you know, and we want to talk about this, this and this. Right. And they'll they'll give me that list. And it's up to me behind the scenes to get.
00:03:24
Speaker
decently good at it,
Researching Malta's Megalithic Temples
00:03:25
Speaker
right? And that's where the whole Hey, you're a PhD archaeologist kind of comes in, because even though it might not be your area of expertise, like this one, megalithic temples of Malta, is it my expertise? No, but I think it's cool. And you can also kind of talk to other things, you know, like what kind of society would build this kind of stuff? What else was happening in the world at that time? How does this relate to other archaeological sites, right? That that part,
00:03:53
Speaker
Those of us who do this, it's a it's a it's a tough but rewarding gig. But anyway, one of these that I was looking up was the megalithic temples of Malta. They wanted to go over this. And as I as I'm doing all my work, you know, to kind of get decent at talking about this, I'm like, hey. I think I'm going to do two for one.
00:04:14
Speaker
I think I'm gonna use this for my pseudo-archaeology podcast because some of the stories that relate to this are very pseudo-archaeological, right? Now, in terms of doing the research, you know, what do I do? People ask me this, like, how do you, you know, research for a topic? And honestly, I do it very similar to how you would, like, what if somebody,
00:04:40
Speaker
Wanted you to talk about something that you that's within your area of expertise, but you don't know it specifically. Well, the first thing you do is like Google it, you know, read like a Wikipedia entry or two on it, but then.
00:04:57
Speaker
What I usually do is kind of look for a handful of articles that I know are real articles. And I think you guys know what I mean, right? That they're published by kind of reputable sources, that kind of stuff. And then I kind of go do a bit of a short but deep dive on on the topic at hand. And that's what I did with the megalithic temples of Malta.
Comparison with Gobekli Tepe
00:05:21
Speaker
I kind of went through it and
00:05:23
Speaker
Again they're unique man they remind me a lot of go back to a. It's the same kind of thing where these are.
00:05:34
Speaker
Structures that are they are megalith mega is big lip is stone, right? These are big stone structures so they're you they're made using really big stones and While go back Lee Tepe. I think the earliest they go back to like 9500 BC or something like that So we're talking like 11,000 years right go back Lee Tepe is old go back Lee Tepe always wins for kind of the oldest ones of these but the megalith of Malta go back to like
00:06:01
Speaker
3600 B.C., I think. So they're still, you know, 5500 years old, right? These are still older than the Great Pyramids and that kind of stuff. And I do believe that the that the Malta ones used to be thought of as the oldest of this type of structure before the Gobekli Tepe ones were found. So, you know, what's what's the setup of these? What are these? OK. First, the island of Malta.
00:06:31
Speaker
is in the middle of nowhere, you guys.
Malta's Early Farming Society
00:06:34
Speaker
It is. It's in the Mediterranean. But wow. Right. It's kind of between Europe and Africa, a little bit closer to Europe. Right. But it's it's very, very remote.
00:06:49
Speaker
Now, it looks like, according to archaeology, that the earliest people to Malta got to this island around, I think they were saying 5,900 B.C. or so. So, you know, we rounded up what, you know, 6,000 B.C., 7,500, 8,000 years, something like that, which in the history of the world is fairly recent, right?
00:07:14
Speaker
And these are likely people I believe they're saying from the European side, from from from the Europe side, because it is a little closer to Europe. So these at the time would have been kind of early farming peoples. And that is what they did. So if you if you think of that, this is kind of an early farming culture, similar to go back to the tepe, right? I'm not saying there's a secret connection.
00:07:42
Speaker
between Gobekli Tepe and Malta, because there's not two different places in the world at two different times. But what makes them similar, it's kind of like convergent evolution. You know, these are similar peoples with vaguely similar ways of life. Farming, right. And in order to kind of maintain group cohesion, they build interesting kind of
00:08:11
Speaker
the equivalent of like a community center, right in the middle of their town. You can think of this also as,
Layout and Cultural Significance of Temples
00:08:19
Speaker
you know how in every old European town, it'll be this little town and then they have this like big ass cathedral, you know, little tiny town, big ass cathedral. It's the same ideology, right? Where the community comes together and they make this centralized structure. Now, I don't want to oversell
00:08:39
Speaker
The megalithic temples of Malta, they're not, you know, 100 feet tall or something like this. Again, they're similar to go back to the Tepe or or other situations where. In the Malta case, there's like a. The seven structures that how they are made is they're sort of like an open, I guess you could call it a four court or like a little plaza or something, an open there's an open area
00:09:07
Speaker
And then on one kind of one edge of it, you have this stone structure with these interior rooms called abscess. Right. And the interior rooms are much more private. So you kind of have and I think they kind of come in pairs, but you kind of have one with like two rooms or four rooms or six rooms. Right.
00:09:30
Speaker
But these are the private portions. And then you have this more public outer area and and that the private area and then kind of the delineation on one side of the public area is all made with these big stones.
00:09:45
Speaker
And to look at him, you go, oh, that's cool. And there's some carvings and stuff on some of these stones, I believe. But you go, oh, this had to be obviously organized labor. This is obviously something that was planned out. This is obviously something where the community came together to make these really interesting, cool, megalithic temples. Now, was it doable by a farming society of, you know, six thousand years ago? Sure.
00:10:13
Speaker
very doable to get a group of people together to make these kinds of things. Again, it wasn't some fantastical, impossible thing, very reasonable for that period of time and very cool, very unique and interesting. When we return a deeper dive into the megalithic temples of Malta.
00:10:35
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the pseudo archaeology podcast, episode 143. And we have been discussing the megalithic temples of Malta. Very cool, kind of unique. These not super huge temples, but made with very big stones.
00:10:51
Speaker
And as I said, these make a lot of sense for early farming societies as an area for a community to gather, maybe organize, maybe worship. That would make sense. Very similar to a modern community center or church in a small town. We get that. And again, these were made, the earliest ones,
00:11:17
Speaker
were made in about thirty six hundred bc and they built them and maintain them for a while for about a thousand years or so i think it petered out around twenty five hundred bc so impressive cool.
00:11:34
Speaker
structure that this that this community made and kind of kept going. Now, you know, people are curious like, oh, what kind of stone are they made out of? Well, guess what? Local stone, right? It happens to be limestone in this in this case. This is boy. I think we're talking late meolithic.
00:11:55
Speaker
I think I'm right on that. Is it Neolithic or is it early Bronze Age? I think we're late Neolithic.
The Hypogeum Necropolis
00:12:02
Speaker
You know, that's fine. On Malta, while you have these temples, there's also like this cave thing, a necropolis that they call the hypogeum. And to my feeling of this, this one was a bit harder for me to figure out for sure. I think this was a natural cave
00:12:24
Speaker
that the people of Malta carved out, right? And made it a place where they buried some of their dead. And what's interesting about this cave on Malta is some aspects of it are similar.
00:12:36
Speaker
to the temples, to the above ground temples, the idea of the absas, you know, that they have on the above ground temples, these more private areas in the cave to the kind of carved out these little alcoves. And it's sort of with a similar idea to the same people on the island with the same ideology. You don't say and that the age, the when the cave was in use thing,
00:13:04
Speaker
does seem to track with the when the temples above ground were built. So, hey, these early farming groups are, you know, having rituals and this kind of thing in the underground cave and they're doing rituals and this kind of thing on the above ground structures. Right. Makes sense. Which one came first? I don't know. I tend to cross culturally see that stuff like this
00:13:31
Speaker
can often start in a cave because the cave is a natural structure, you know, the natural formation and then go above ground. But in this instance, I don't know, you know, I could I could see it going going either way. So with that. We just have this this outline of this interesting situation that this culture does, right?
00:14:00
Speaker
They have rituals in this cave and they have these above ground structures and both of which work as community tent poles, you know, where everyone can kind of come together and be part of this community and do things that human beings like beyond just growing food all the time, like getting together and sharing in rituals and gluing everyone together as one now to mess everything up.
Debunking Myths and Local Legends
00:14:29
Speaker
Of course, you have every pseudo archaeological story you need that overlays this stuff in Malta. I mean, just that you have a cave. Oh, Lord, you know what's coming here. Right. And of course, these structures, too, are labeled with every single pseudo archaeological story. So let's go down the list first, as I alluded to at the very beginning.
00:14:56
Speaker
that the temples were built by giants. Now, there is on Malta, they have their own mythology that does deal with giants, and that's no problem. You know, mythology is fun and it makes natural sense. Oh, the big stones moved by giants. But then, of course, there are factions out there that will use this mythology as like, ah, yes, proof that there were once giants because somebody told the story about giants. So, you know,
00:15:26
Speaker
Is there evidence of giants? Well, not yet. I know we haven't dug up the entire island. We're still looking for the giant bones, but I'm sure they're right around the corner.
00:15:38
Speaker
And then in terms of the cave, the Hypogeum, in the early 20th century, the cave was first found, I believe in 1902. Yeah, I think the cave was found in 1902 by a local stonemason who was building some houses like right down the way, like right near the cave. He stumbled across this cave ever since the discovery of the cave.
00:16:02
Speaker
Now, yes, there are real archaeological aspects of the cave, like real burials of this kind of thing that you can find in the cave. But there were one or two people who just made up stories about what happened in the cave and they've become these stories that never die. Right. We deal with these in pseudo archaeology all the time. The story that this person made up in 1906, it's obvious they made it up in 1906.
00:16:30
Speaker
But nobody will kill it. One of them is just that a group of children got lost in the cave and died. Like a group of children just got lost in the cave and never were heard from again. And this story just spread and it just became known as like, oh, my God, you guys, do you realize that like a group of children died in there once?
00:16:55
Speaker
And it makes sense to not really go any further in that story because something like giants, you know, that's bullshit, right? But if you hear that like a group of children got lost in a cave and died, there's no reason not to believe that because it's real. There's there's nothing supernatural about that. That's just a sad story, right?
00:17:18
Speaker
It turns out it's totally false. There's no record of a group of children ever going in that cave and dying. We think what happened and, you know, we can't be sure, but you could see how a handful of parents could just like tell their kids, you know, shortly after this cave is found that the kids all want to go play in it. Like, hey, you got to watch out. Somebody died in there.
00:17:45
Speaker
Right? Would I do that to my kid? Would I lie to them? Oh, hell yeah. I feel sad for my children. You know, I've really destroyed their brains with the lies I've told in order to keep them safe.
00:17:57
Speaker
But it just becomes a thing, right? I thought that was fascinating because it's totally believable unless you dig a little deeper. But then beyond that, there's stories that like strange people have come out of the cave. They were all either dressed in white or all had white hair. You know, it depends on who you ask. It's just like any other kind of mythology. It's going to change over time. Mysterious sounds were heard emanating out of the cave.
00:18:26
Speaker
Yeah, OK, you know, but. Of course, there's no evidence for any of this kind of stuff. The overwhelming evidence is that a certain person or two made these stories up at a specific time. But, you know, that's what you get with this kind of stuff.
00:18:44
Speaker
Now, of course, the cave has its its silly stories because it's a cave and any other cliche cave story has been slapped on this one. You know, is it is it aligned to a certain thing? Did a certain ghost come out at a certain time? Is it haunted? You know, it's going to be yes to all of these things. But what actually has even more pseudo archaeological stories attached to them, if anything, is the above ground temples.
00:19:14
Speaker
And when we return the pseudo archaeology of the megalithic temples of Malta. Hello and welcome back to the pseudo archaeology podcast, episode one hundred and forty three, I believe. What if I get that wrong? Oh, my God. You'll be very confused.
00:19:35
Speaker
So we have been discussing the megalithic temples of Malta. They're kind of unique. They're kind of gobekli tepe-esque in their in their kind of overall feel. And it makes sense because this is an early farming population who's building kind of a centralized structure where the community can get together. So.
Astronomical Alignments and Critiques
00:19:58
Speaker
In terms of the pseudo archaeology, the fake stories that have been slapped onto this thing, there's quite a few. And first, one of the more foolish ones has to do with alignment now.
00:20:14
Speaker
I'm always very shaky about alignments in archaeology because you can align anything to anything. So even in real archaeology, when we're talking about alignments, like in the Maya world, there's a thing called an e-group where basically there's one main pyramid and then there's a secondary pyramid
00:20:41
Speaker
to the east and that secondary pyramid has kind of three smaller little pyramids on top. And these three small pyramids will align to the equinox and to the winter solstice and to the summer solstice. Right. That's the thing. Now, on some of these, you can you can really see it, meaning if you're standing on the big pyramid that you can see these alignments. And some of those you go, OK, yeah, that's sure. Sure.
00:21:10
Speaker
But some people start to see E groups in the Maya area like everywhere. And it's like, no, right. They got to be specific. They got to really work. They got to be really exact. I've seen this in my just work in archaeology over the years where real archaeologists are trying to sort of prove alignments. And sometimes it's true. Sometimes I go with them. But I'm always a little hesitant because
00:21:38
Speaker
This is one of those moments where if you want it to be true, your wants and feelings can trump the data, right? It's got to be really good for an alignment. And of course, the stuff in Malta is not now.
00:21:56
Speaker
basic alignments for stuff like Winter Solstice, Summer Solstice, that kind of stuff. You can find stuff like that and be fair with it. You're like, okay. Honestly, for ancient people, it's not that hard to do. I'm not throwing ancient people under the bus, but I am saying it's like on the day of the Winter Solstice, if you just bust out two stones,
00:22:18
Speaker
And you put them in a line with the winter solstice and you stand, stand behind those two stones. You go, Hey, look, these two stones are in alignment with the winter solstice. That's easy. It's easy to do, right? Just about any culture can do that. So it's not like, Oh my God, they were so much closer to nature than we are. They could put two stones together and align them.
00:22:43
Speaker
to the summer solstice. If only I could do that. Right. It's like, no, it's no big deal. Right. So that stuff, you see it. OK. But of course.
00:22:53
Speaker
they take the alignments at the temples of Malta to extremes, right? And of course, we got to bring in our old friend and foil, Graham Hancock, in what's the show that he just did? Ancient Apocalypse. In Ancient Apocalypse, he goes to town, I think it's episode three, on Malta. He visits it and he starts to talk about the alignments and he shows this
00:23:20
Speaker
You're like, what are you doing? Where like all the all of them across the entire island are all aligned, whatever. I didn't even get it. I'm like, whatever, dude. But he does start to talk about procession and it's like, oh, my God. So.
00:23:38
Speaker
I gotta make this make sense to you guys so first session is the idea that the earth wobbles on its axis that is true the wobble is very slow. It takes twenty six thousand years for one full wobble to happen and what i mean by the earth wobbling if you guys spin a top.
00:23:56
Speaker
You spin a top and you know how when the top starts to lose its energy, how it wobbles a little, it kind of, right. Does that little kind of wall. It doesn't stay like stick straight, starts to wobble. That's procession.
00:24:10
Speaker
And so the Earth does that. The Earth spins on its axis, but it also wobbles really slow. What that means is the currently the North Star is directly right on North, right? It won't be in a couple thousand years, and it'll take another 26,000 years for it to get to be.
00:24:29
Speaker
Straight back to the north star right there's a little wobble there. There's a little change. It means the stars in the night sky won't line up exactly how they always are. It'll change a little bit, but then get back. It's, of course, very, very slow. We're talking a twenty six thousand year and it's not like the stars get completely out of whack. They just picture that north pole of the earth just wobbling just a little. Right. That just means that
00:24:56
Speaker
It basically does the equivalent of it draws a little circle right at the very northern most part of the night sky. So every because we're on the earth and we're looking outwards, we're shifting all the stars just a little bit in terms of where they're going to rise on the horizon at night, right? Because we're just a little planet. The stars don't give a shit about us. So.
00:25:19
Speaker
Anyway, and you're like, procession. Sure. This is classic pseudo archaeology. Is there a thing called procession? Yes. Does it take twenty six thousand years? Yes.
Criticism of Graham Hancock's Claims
00:25:29
Speaker
Now, what Graham has saying, though, is that the temples of Malta were actually not built.
00:25:35
Speaker
In 3500 B.C., they were built 11000 years ago. You know why he needs that for his same old, tired, stupid, complex civilization at the end of the last ice age, right? He's going to be like, yeah, so this was one of those super centers and go back. Lee Tepe was one, too, you know, and they all work together across the earth.
00:25:59
Speaker
Oh, this same old, same old foolish bullshit, you know, right? Aren't you tired? Like, even for you guys, I'm like, are they tired of me saying this? Maybe they don't like me anymore. So he's like, he's like, look, this this stuff on Malta has actually been here for like 11000 years and I can prove it because these pyramids align to Sirius.
00:26:23
Speaker
Some of them, you know, they aligned where Sirius would have been like 11,000 years ago. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky. Sirius is the the dog star, right? Sirius is right below Orion. If you look in the night sky, you're like, what is that really bright star? Is that a planet? No, it's Sirius. It's the brightest star in the night sky. And he says that these some of these pyramids were aligned to Sirius, whatever. This is like this.
00:26:48
Speaker
is seriously a waste of everyone's time. You know what I mean? This is a classic pseudo-archaeology story where it's just some bullshit story. As you've seen in pseudo-archaeology, it's always story first, data second, right? We in real archaeology go the other way. We go data first, and then we tell the story that the data is telling us, right? Graham Hancock has a story he has to prove.
00:27:16
Speaker
this super civilization at like 11,000 years ago. So he's like, oh, this place in Malta that I need for my story. I'm not going to listen to any of the actual archaeology that everything dates to like 3,500 B.C. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. It's 11,000 years old. He just throws that out there. It's just 11,000 years old because it has to be because it has to align to Sirius. What?
00:27:40
Speaker
OK. Right. It's just it's just so tired. Like, aren't you? Isn't it a bummer when the pseudo archaeology stories, they just don't even deliver?
True Historical Importance of Malta's Structures
00:27:50
Speaker
You know, you're like, man, if you're going to tell me a bullshit story, at least at the end, I want I want to go for a ride. You know, I like I want to hear some cool stuff. I want to be like, oh, my God. Wait. And then what happened at Malta? Well, you see, actually, it's a line to Sirius. But.
00:28:10
Speaker
Oh, man, you know, and it just it just negates everything that the the actual cool story of these early people of Malta, you know, coming across the Mediterranean to the middle of nowhere in like like 7500 years ago and beginning a farming society that survives.
00:28:32
Speaker
for thousands of years. And at one point they make these really cool, unique little temples out of really big stones. Right. And they have this vibrant ritual and social system that lasts for over a thousand years, at least. Right. And then ultimately they just change things and they do something different and they move on with their lives. And there weren't any giants at all ever.
00:29:03
Speaker
And with that sad portion of this story, I leave you my friends and I'll talk to you next time. Thanks for listening to the pseudo archaeology podcast. Please like and subscribe wherever you like and subscribe. And if you have questions for me, Dr. Andrew Kinkela, feel free to reach out using the links below or go to my YouTube channel. Kinkela teaches archaeology. See you guys next time.
00:29:36
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.