A megalithic temple could be 8,000 years older than previously thought, according to a controversial Netflix series.
The 2022 series, Ancient Apocalypse – branded the streaming platform’s “most dangerous show” – suggested that the famous temple is 8,000 years older than archaeologists believe, having been built around 12,000 BC instead of between 3,600 and 2,500 BC.
Journalist and so-called “pseudo archaeologist” Graham Hancock – who explored prehistoric sites as part of his mission to find clues of what he believes to be a “lost civilisation” dating back to the last Ice Age – suggested that Malta’s prehistory, especially considering its megalithic (large stone prehistoric monument) temples, is far older than what archaeologists suggest, in the latest major archaeoligical breakthrough in the region.
According to Malta’s official timeline, its first people – simple, Stone Age farmers – settled around 7,900 years ago, having crossed over from the neighbouring island of Sicily. They were said to have brought the first domesticated animals and plants with them and developed their own culture.
Gozo’s Ġgantija temples are said to have been built 5,600 years ago, however, there are no written sources, nor reliable carbon dating, that confirm this.
“None of the prehistory of Malta stacks up,” Hancock said during the episode, “Sirius Rising”.
“Think about it: Could those farmers, who archaeologists tell us never built anything bigger than a shack, really have achieved all this?” he asks.
The series shows a visual reconstruction of what the temple must have looked like thousands of years ago – an impressive and towering three-storey temple with walls painted red.
He said he was convinced that there was another lost civilization which could have built the temples before the first farmers arrived, dating back to when the island was connected to Sicily and the rest of Europe. Hancock believes that further evidence of such civilisations could be beneath the sea before rising sea levels separated the island from the mainland.
During the last Ice Age, around 12,000 BC, animals migrated to the warmer Malta to survive the harsh period.
“Humans could have followed them,” Hancock continued. He then spoke with the president of the Prehistoric Society of Malta, Anton Mifsud, who studied the site of Ghar Dalam, where animal parts and fossils from the Ice Age were discovered. He said that archaeologists found Neanderthal teeth in the stalagmites of the ancient cave, but the results confirming their age were not divulged.
Mifsud said he conducted an extensive analysis on the teeth, which then confirmed that they were Neanderthal. This suggests that humans were in Malta during the Ice Age.
Hancock also visited the Mnajdra temples, where he said that whoever built the temples had knowledge of the cosmos: “We know that they observed the rising of the sun and the position of the stars and incorporated that into their architecture,” Hancock said. During the spring and autumn equinoxes, the rays of the rising run exactly bisect the temple entrance, flooding it with light, similar to Stonehenge on the longest day of the year.
“Mnajdra and other temples may be part of a larger, ancient astronomical project and would rewrite the accepted timeline of Malta’s prehistory,” Hancock said.
He also spoke with a Dutch researcher, Lenie Reedijk, who wrote a book about the Sirius Rising theory, which puts forth the idea that the temples were constructed thousands of years before archaeologists believe they were built, to point at the brightest star in the sky, Sirius.
“At some point in time, this star passes through all the entrances of the temples,” she said.
He said the star could be matched with Ancient Egypt, associating the famous myth of Osiris and Isis, where Osiris established rule of law and taught civilisations agriculture. Osiris left Egypt under Isis’ rule, while he travelled the earth, teaching civilization skills such as the construction of such temples and knowledge of the stars.
However, Maltese archaeologists soon pushed back after the Netflix show aired. They criticised the way the show painted the prehistoric Maltese as being incapable of constructing the temples themselves and peddling pseudoscientific theories with very little material evidence to back them up, according to Times of Malta.
A senior curator at Heritage Malta, Katya Stroud, who appeared briefly in the series, implied that her appearance was “heavily edited and quoted out of context” to suit the narrative the series was trying to push. She said her appearance did not mean she agrees with the show’s content.
“It is amazing how local media prioritise what is said by foreign experts at the expense of ignoring local archaeologists and curators… not all marketing is good marketing,” she said at the time.
