By Marc Roland. After more than 30 centuries, the ruins of Malta still stand as mute testimony to the singular genius of our Stone Age ancestors. It was here, on these arid islands in the middle of the Mediterranean—due south of Sicily—that they successfully transitioned from Paleolithic cave painters to Neolithic megalith builders. In so doing, they spread a new creed of celestial worship far beyond their obscure and inhospitable base, encoding its fundamental principles in monumental architecture.
Long before—17,000 years ago—they had fled their European birthplace—then in the tightening grip of ice age conditions—and migrated down the Italian peninsula. Mighty glaciers then locked up much of the Northern Hemisphere’s water, resulting in sea levels nearly 400 feet lower than at present, exposing a land-bridge to north Africa……. [Read the entire article as PDF…]
The Barnes Review, May/June 2014: The Comet that Killed the Bronze Age