Malta's lost civilization lasted only 1500 years, but it produced some of the oldest buildings that still stand today.
Archaeologists have analyzed pollen buried deep in the earth and ancient DNA from skulls and bones, uncovering the mysteries of an ancient civilization that survived on the island of Malta for more than 1,000 years and then collapsed within two generations. This is part of extending the use of archaeological techniques to areas of work in environments previously considered unusable.
The temple culture of the Mediterranean Maltese Archipelago began nearly 6,000 years ago and may have been in its heyday in the thousands – far more densely populated than continental Europeans could have managed at the time. The people of the island built elaborate sacred sites, such as the famous Ġgantija temple complex, whose architecture is one of the earliest known free-standing buildings. However, after 1500, they disappeared.
The island can be used as a laboratory to understand the changes in the wider world.
Caroline Malone, an expert in prehistory at Queen's University belfast in Northern Ireland, wanted to understand how the fragile island ecology sustained humans for so long in the face of droughts, storms and soil erosion – and why it ultimately failed. She worked on an ambitious project, Fragsus, which utilizes multiple tools to find some answers. Scientists drilled into the center of the earth at depths of 8 to 30 meters, using carbon dating to date the sediment to understand the time period it refers to. They counted pollen at two-centimeter intervals and analyzed individual pollen grains using chemical signatures imprinted by the surrounding environment to understand the nutrients the parent plants absorbed from the ground. Molluscs embedded in the soil reveal a glimpse of the landscape because "snails," Malone says, "are very picky about where they live and don't move very far." ”
At the same time, other experts assessed the wear and tear of tens of thousands of human bones from the cemetery to understand the way the islanders lived. Malone says the team has broken new ground by analyzing bones using techniques called ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis. It was previously thought that any warm climate south of the Alps would destroy these ancient DNA. But it turns out that the skull, buried at a relatively cool depth of 5 meters, still harbors DNA in the thick bones behind the ears.
Based on their findings, the team believes these people understand the importance of soil management in fighting hunger. Within a hundred years of their arrival in the tiny 316-square-kilometer archipelago, they cut down most of the trees, severely eroding the ground.
To survive, they raise cows instead of prioritizing meat — killing newborn livestock before they have a chance to graze. They mixed livestock manure back into the soil and may even have made the arduous journey to flush the soil into the valley and back uphill to restore highland fields. Evidence of this lies in strange parallel ruts on the ground, possibly cart tracks, and signs from bones that soft tissue is sometimes completely worn out by intense repetitive activity. Curiously, Malone said, they barely eat fish.
In order to achieve such a complex collaborative effort, there must be some powerful force that unites communities: temples. Until now, temple culture was thought to be centered on the worship of the mother goddess, but Malone saw it as more of a clubhouse culture, focusing on rituals and feasts, but revering food rather than gods. It is now clear that in these complexes, people displayed their livestock and harvests on special benches and altars, feasted and stored food. Malone said there was no skeletal evidence of violent deaths and no fortifications. Instead, the society seems to have survived through cooperation and sharing.
Despite social strength and success, as centuries have passed, soil erosion and climatic conditions have deteriorated, as evidenced by the different types of pollen in the soil, the number of tree remains has decreased, and human bones have been damaged by inadequate diet. In the last centuries of temple culture, between 2600 BC and 2400 BC, half of those who died were children. Malone said other factors may also have an impact. Adult skulls from this period vary widely, and their DNA suggests that the arrival of migrants from the Eurasian savannahs and sub-Saharan Africa could have caused demographic stress and new diseases.
The decisive blow could have been an unknown catastrophe that occurred around 2350 BC, during which the entire region suffered a catastrophic climate event — possibly a cloud of dust caused by a volcanic eruption, according to the tree ring analysis.
Malone said the island could be used as a laboratory to understand changes in the wider world. However, the geographical nature of islands can also make traditional research techniques redundant, creating problems. For example, in Spain's Canary Islands, ancient pollen was not well preserved in the local terrain. What's more, many of the island's important plants — such as its iconic laurel tree — produce little or no pollen, and environmental conditions have eroded other evidence, such as large fossils.
Lea de Nascimento, an ecologist at the University of Laguna in Tenerife, said: "We lack (well-preserved) agents of all traditions. She wanted to piece together the history of the vegetation on the Canary Islands — especially what they looked like before humans arrived more than 2,000 years ago. To do this, she is using a neo-paleoecological technique called paleoenvironmental DNA analysis.
"If you have a long-term view, you know the resilience of ecosystems."
Microbial, plant, and animal species leave environmental DNA (eDNA) in soil or water, and scientists are increasingly scanning it to understand what's happening in today's environment. It is a relatively new paleo-ecological tool that has so far been used in the coldest and driest places due to its susceptibility to warmth and humidity. But de Nascimento is now probing these islands from core samples spanning thousands of years.
For the ISLAND PALECO project, she spent two years in a dedicated laboratory in New Zealand learning from experts how to search for paleoenvironmental DNA in sediment cores. After a year of frustration, she has now discovered DNA from 100 years ago, which is much richer in variety than in pollen records. She still wants to retrieve the dna of the more ancient environment. "If you have a long-term view, you know the resilience of ecosystems," she said. "If we continue to put pressure on ecosystems or address climate change in the future, it will help us understand how ecosystems will react." Learning more about past ecosystems will also help today's environmentalists restore landscapes that have been depleted by humans and the animals they bring, she said. "Problem," she said,