Ten MinuTe History Lesson

“Ok, now focus! So, in 5000BC we have the first inhabitants of Malta, who came from Sicily. We know this because of pottery that was found in a cave here which matches perfectly with pottery of Ragusa, south-east Sicily. They cross the channel 90 km, they came here. They lasted until 4100 BC; they lived in caves; they were the Neolithic. From 4100—2500BC we have the Temple Period.

In these 1500 years, more than 20 megalithic sites were built, spread around Malta – 5 in Gozo, along with underground sites which were dug. “From 2500—800 BC, this is the Bronze Age, still just pre- history. A new culture reached our island, totally different from the Temple one; in fact, there was an abrupt end to the Temple culture in the year 2600 and this new culture came later west, to avoid all the trouble that was going on in the Middle East.

“Now, in the year 218BC until 6th  century AD we were  ruled by the Romans; and until 871ADis Byzantine. 871—1090AD we have the Arabs; what we still have from there are few remains, but this is where we have our language from. Then, in 1090AD we have Count Roger the Norman; we were re-Christianised here. But Count Roger let the Arabs keep ruling the whole archipelago until1127AD, when King Roger, the son of Count Roger, expelled all the Arabs. In fact we have marble and stone tombstones of Maimuna: she was a 21 year old who died in Gozo in 1174; there is an Arabic poem inscribed on this, so we still were speaking Arabic even here. What happened most probably was that when Malta was ruled by the Latin world, the locals were still communicating in this Arabic–Maltese language, Siculo-Arabic, whatever you’ll call it.

“From 1127—1530, we were a feudal state under various rulers, Aragonese, Castilian and so on. Now 1530–1798 was the Knights of St John, the Christian order of knights who were given Malta by Spanish king Charles V to defend Rome against the Ottoman Empire; then Napoleon for 2 years (1798—1800) before he was expelled by the Maltese, and then 1800—1964 Malta is a British colony and until 1979 was the Mediterranean Naval Base. Officially Malta became a colony in 1814 and became a Republic 13th December, 1974.  We joined the EU in 2004.”