Neolithic Malta only has one secret which remains locked - what happened to the people? After the final stages of Maltese stone age, the people disappeared - there are some theories as to what happened to them, most of which revolve around starvation - the people were unable to properly manage the land (Malta is not the most fertile place on the planet), and years of poor crops caused mass starvation and death. A new group of people did move to Malta during the Bronze Age.
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| Welcome....to Jurassic Pa - er I mean the Bronze Age. |
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| So it turns out that no matter what, earthenware is always the last survivor. |
The earthenware on display in the bronze age section was certainly more ornate than that of the preceding era. What set this group of people apart from their forebears, however, was not their earthenware, but their reliance on metals and alloys to complete their day to day tasks.
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| Bronze age Tupperware. |
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| Various bronze age artifacts - some of these were purely ornamental, such as the necklace in the top left corner, others had much more practical uses, such as the axe-head in the bottom right corner. |
The bronze age also highlighted another significantly difference between the two major societal groups in the island's history - the bronze age Maltese had trade relations with other societies in the Mediterranean region. As is always the case when trade is involved, the foreign goods were most often used as status symbols for wealth.
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| Surprisingly, this is in better condition than some of the roads I've seen here. |
The only other point of any real interest regarding the bronze age is that they did have a highway system of sorts - the picture above shows how beasts of burden would often draw carts along the same paths of desire, thus creating a road of sorts. The runnels provided significant evidence pointing towards the main habitations of the bronze age settlers.
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