of this exuberant megalithic undertaking? In obvious reference to present-day Maltese religious passions, conventional archaeology—not devoid of a whiff of condescension—puts the Maltese megalithic phenomenon down to a religious craze.

But was it?

The Maltese temples present another question. Despite the fact that they were all built according to the same typical clover-lead ground plan, and that their natural decorations and figurative art appear to derive from a single, homogenous culture, why are no two of them oriented towards the same direction?

Aerial photo showing ground plan of Ggantija temples, note the slight shift in their orientations

Aerial photo showing ground plan of Mnajdra temples

Tarxien – altars with spirals and goddess statue

Spiral motif from Tarxien

Spiral motif from Tarxien

Spiral motif from Tarxien

Can these mysteries be solved in a satisfactory way? Can they besolved so that all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place and yield a coherent picture? Any attempt at answering these questions must necessarily start with the most obvious and fundamental of them all:

How Old Are the Temples?

Unbeknown to most of us,ii the question of the antiquity of the Maltese temples has been the subject of wilful manipulation ever since Arthur Evans set foot on Malta in 1897, a few years prior to the start of his excavations at the extensive site at Knossos in Crete, dubbed by him a ‘Palace’. From that ominous year onward, the Maltese megalithic phenomenon ceased to be valued in its own right but was bound up with a project induced by a Social Darwinist quest for finding the roots—the ‘cradle’—of European