a very vibrant building culture over an extensive area in and around the Mediterranean, of people who were both interested in and knowledgeable about the movements of the stars.

Was civilisation started by astronomers and not by farmers? A fresh look at Malta’s megalithic temples seems to point strongly in that direction, with exciting consequences for our thoughts about the roots of human civilisation.

i See John D. Evans, The Prehistoric Antiquities of the Maltese Islands, London 1971.

ii It is little known that Arthur Evans visited Malta at all. His opinions even influenced German researcher Albert Mayr, who conducted the first survey of the megalithic sites, Die Vorgeschichtlichen Denkmäler Maltas, published in 1901.

iii See Lenie Reedijk, Sirius, the Star of the Maltese Temples, MaletBooks 2018 (hereafter: SSMT), Part One, Ch.room for all the other temples of which no ground plan–and thus no measurable azimuth–has remained. Thank you to David Gahan for his continuous support of this important project. About the author

Born in the Netherlands, Lenie Reedijk is a juridical translator by profession. She studied English at the University of Utrecht and German language and literature in Amsterdam and Berlin. In Berlin she participated as a translator in a book project on Maltese literature, Literatur aus Malta (1989), which brought her to the islands the following year. She lived in Malta from 1990 to 1996, working as an interpreter. During this period her interest in Malta’s ancient temple ruins was awakened.

Lenie Reedijk is the author of Archaeological Walks on Gozo (MaletBooks 2009). She has given talks and seminars