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Colossal Temples

The first known inhabitants of the Maltese islands migrated from Sicily around 5000 BC. Their religion focussed on the worship of fertility, and many of their goddess statues, including the famous "Venus of Malta," are on display at the Archeology Museum in Valletta. The giant temples, older and more elaborate than Stonehenge, are made of megaliths placed in curved outlines. This Neolithic civilization seems to have died out in 2500 BC because of chronic drought. Bronze Age colonizers followed., succeeded by Phoenicians, then Carthaginians. Malta was valuable because of its strategic location in the middle of Mediterranean trade routes!