You can see the three successive temples in the plan and photo above. Earliest, before 3300 BCE, was the badly preserved temple in the upper right. This originally had five "apses," as we call the semicircular rooms that branch off from the central space. Then the lower left temple was built, and finally the central group, which is an extension of the second temple. Incidentally, archaeologists assume that these temples once had roofs and so were probably quite dark inside, perhaps with small windows illuminating key points like altars.
Numerous small figurines were recovered from the site when it was excavated in the 1910s.
Ceremonial flint knives and animal bones found in the temples make us think that animal sacrifice was a key rite. Each temple also had an open courtyard outside each entrance where the ground was compacted. No doubt public rituals of some kind were enacted there, and it would be nice to think that they involved dancing.
These stone balls have been found around all the temples and also at quarry sites; the leading theory is that they were used as rollers to transport the megalithic blocks.
Malta's neolithic inhabitants arrived in a single wave in about 4100 BCE, probably from Sicily. After that they evolved independently for 1600 years, with little evidence of outside influence. The temples of this phase are not really like anything else in the world. Then in 2500 BCE the temple culture came to an abrupt end. The new rulers used the old temples as burial grounds for their cremated dead, and they slowly filled in with sand. The new rulers also came from Italy or Sicily and they brought with them the warrior cults of Bronze Age Europe, in which swords figure more prominently than fat goddesses.
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