There is a lot of history to get through for such a small island, so I am going to attempt to condense it just a little bit.
 |
| Hagar Qim |
Let's go right back to when early Sicilians floated over in search of pastures greener and landed about 5,000 years B.C., to become the first known settlers on Malta. Go and take a look at the Tarxien temples and the Hypogeum among others, and you'll get some idea of what early Maltese got up to in their spare time. One of the things was probably killing and eating pygmy elephants and hippos, which was a shame. You can go see the skeleton of one of these at the Ghar Dalam museum. One archeologist even suggested that the discovery of such skeletons may have led to the belief in Cyclops', as the skulls just had one big hole for the trunk which could have been mistaken for an eye socket. Although he may have been one of those off-the-wall archeologists who believes in lay lines and alien interventions and stuff... Okay, I don't want to get bogged down here, too much history, too little space. So everybody left the island in 2500BC and about 100 years later a new bunch of bronze age people arrived.
