Megalithic Temples of Malta

The first evidence of human habitation in the Neolithic on the islands belongs to the Għar Dalam phase, around 5000 BC. The Temple period ran from about 4100 BC to roughly 2500 BC and is divided into five phases, the first two of which left mostly pottery shards. Temple building proper begins with the Ġgantija phase from about 3600 BC, named after the site on the Xagħra plateau in Gozo, to which the earliest datable temples belong; the Saflieni phase that followed, named after the Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni, was transitional. Archaeologists believe the megalithic complexes are the result of local innovations in a process of cultural evolution.

The Tarxien phase marks the peak of the temple civilisation, in the craftsmanship of its pottery and in its sculptural decoration, free-standing and in relief. At Tarxien itself the earliest temple, to the north-east, was built between 3600 and 3200 BC, and the south and east temples between 3150 and 2500 BC. The southern temple at Mnajdra is astronomically aligned with the rising sun at the solstices and equinoxes: at the equinox the rays pass straight through the principal doorway to reach the innermost central niche. The large Tarxien complex remained in use until 2500 BC, and after that date the temple-building culture disappeared. The temples had been claimed as the oldest free-standing structures on Earth until the discovery of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey.

Maltese folklore described giants as the builders of the temples, a belief held by Ġan Franġisk Abela (1582–1655), known as the father of Maltese history, and the source of the name Ġgantija, 'Giants' tower'. The presence of the Ġgantija temples was known for a very long time, and in the late eighteenth century Jean-Pierre Houël drew a largely correct plan of their layout before any excavation had been carried out. In 1827 the site was cleared of debris, the soil and remains being lost without proper examination, and the paintings the German artist Brochtorff made of the site are the only practical record of that clearance. Spiral reliefs of the kind at Tarxien once adorned Ġgantija but have faded to the point where they are only clearly recognisable in a series of drawings made by Charles Frederick de Brochtorff in 1829, immediately after the temples' excavation.

Sir Temi Żammit, a Maltese archaeologist of the late nineteenth century, dated the Neolithic temples to 2800 BC and the Bronze Age culture at Tarxien to 2000 BC. Scholars judged those dates "considerably too high" and proposed cutting each by half a millennium, but radiocarbon testing favoured Żammit's dating, and with that proof of the temples' elder origins a theory connecting the temple art with an Aegean-derived culture collapsed. In some cases later Bronze Age peoples had built their own sites over the Neolithic temples, which had confounded early researchers working without modern dating methods.

Żammit excavated Ta' Ħaġrat in Mġarr between 1925 and 1927, where a village on the site pre-dating the temples by centuries yielded the pottery that gives the Mġarr phase its name, and he took charge of the excavation of the temples at Tarxien in the early twentieth century. At Skorba, where a village had occupied the area for roughly twelve centuries before the temples were built, charcoal from a domestic deposit of the Għar Dalam phase against the eleven-metre wall west of the first entrance was radiocarbon dated to 4850 BC.

The Ġgantija temples were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980, and in 1992 the UNESCO committee extended the listing to five further megalithic temple sites: Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra in Qrendi, Ta' Ħaġrat in Mġarr, Skorba in Żebbiegħ and Tarxien in Tarxien. The six are inscribed as a single World Heritage Site under criterion (iv), as an outstanding example of a type of building or architectural ensemble illustrating a significant stage in human history. They are managed by Heritage Malta, while ownership of the surrounding land varies from site to site. Other megalithic temples on the islands lie outside the listing: some, such as Debdieba, were excavated and then reburied, Kordin I and II were destroyed, and Ta' Marżiena has never been excavated.