PREHISTORY: Ancient Mediterranean and Levant - RESEARCH and OUTREACH
ANOTHER GIANT ?
She has no face. No hands. No voice to tell us who she was. We don't even know for sure that she was a she at all!
Only a pair of enormous legs planted firmly upon the earth, wrapped in a beautifully carved skirt that still stands after five thousand years. Beside her, a modern visitor stretches out her arms as wide as they will go, trying to imagine the size of the figure that once rose above the sculpture. It isn't even close.
The upper half disappeared thousands of years ago. Perhaps it fell. Perhaps someone carried away the stone. Perhaps it became part of another building before anyone thought to preserve it. Only the lower half remained, protected by an accident of history. After the temple was abandoned, this chamber slowly filled with soil until the giant's legs were buried completely. The earth became a guardian; a farmer’s field became a shield.
Today she stands once again. For modern people, the skirt says the figure was female, but we can’t really tell. She is immense. And she leaves us with a question that refuses to go away. Why was she made this way?
For more than a century people have argued over the answer. Was this simply the ideal of beauty? Was she a respected elder? A priestess? A mother? A goddess? Does her generous form celebrate prosperity...fertility...the abundance of harvests...or something we have not yet imagined? We do not know. Perhaps that uncertainty is a gift.
Modern people are accustomed to believing that every mystery eventually deserves a final answer. But the builders of these temples may have understood something different—that some truths are better approached with reverence than with certainty.
Standing beside this silent giant, it becomes surprisingly easy to imagine that these shrines were built not merely to impress, but to remind an entire community that life itself was astonishing. The rains came. The seeds grew. Children were born. The seasons returned. Every year, the world offered gifts no human hand could command.
How do you carve gratitude into stone? Maybe...something like this.
Whatever she represented, thousands of people once walked into this sacred place and gazed at her with awe.
Thousands of years later...
...so do we.
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The remains of a similar statue housed in the Museum of Archaeology in Valletta, Malta portrays very faint miniature figures gathered under the skirt like children around the legs of their mother.
RETURNING
The people in this photograph believed they were taking part in something ancient.
Dressed in flowing robes, they gathered among the towering stones of Stonehenge to celebrate the turning of the seasons, hoping to reconnect with a distant past. Yet there is a curious twist.
Stonehenge was already ancient when the Druids first entered history. By then, the great stones had been standing for nearly two thousand years. Who built them? Not the people in this picture.
Why were they built? We still aren't entirely sure. And yet... people keep coming. Generation after generation. Some arrive with notebooks. Some with cameras. Some with scientific instruments. Some with prayers. Some simply stand in silence.
The reasons are different. The destination is the same. Perhaps that is the real mystery of places like Stonehenge. Not that they have all the answers. But that they continue to ask us the questions. What deserves to last? What is worth gathering for? What connects us to those who came before? Across thousands of years, countless feet have crossed this ground, each generation bringing its own hopes and its own understanding.
The stones have welcomed them all. Perhaps that is their greatest gift.
They remind us that every age is searching, and every age returns.
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Stonehenge will always be the most iconic of the mysterious megaliths, even if the stones we see today came very late in the scheme of things.
the bundle
The little figures lay together as though they had been waiting.
Not scattered across the floor. Not tossed aside. Together.
When archaeologists uncovered them, it appeared they had once been carried in a small bag or wrapped in cloth or hide. Time had erased the container itself, leaving only the objects that had rested inside. No one knows who gathered them. Or why.
The place where they were found was a sacred underground chamber for the dead, much like Malta's famous Hypogeum. Long ago, while it was still in use, disaster struck this one on Gozo. The roof collapsed, sealing the chamber beneath tons of stone and earth.
Everything stopped. The bones. The offerings. The bundle. For five thousand years, no human hand disturbed them.
The figures are unlike Malta's famous broad, full-bodied sculptures. These are slender, with strong shoulders and narrowing forms, almost as though they are changing from one shape into another. Becoming. What they were becoming, we cannot say.
Perhaps the people who made them could have explained every detail. Or perhaps they would simply have smiled, knowing that some things are easier to understand with the heart than with words.
I find myself wondering about the last person who held this bundle. Did they know each figure by touch alone? Did they carry them into ceremonies? Did they hope they would comfort the grieving? Did they ever imagine they were setting them down for the last time?
We spend much of our lives collecting things. Most will eventually be forgotten.
But every now and then...someone leaves behind a small bundle that carries not just objects—but the quiet echo of a human life.
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Whether hidden by fancy haircuts or simple hoods -- there is not a single ear depicted in the figures of prehistoric Malta and Gozo. Artists surely knew how to carve one, but NO! Perhaps the people of that time and place needed to be careful what they listened to.
safe
He doesn't know how old the stones are.
He has never heard words like Neolithic or archaeology.
He doesn't know that people travel from around the world to stand where he is sitting.
He's just happy.
Perhaps someone he loves is standing behind the camera. Perhaps he has just heard a familiar laugh. Perhaps there is a grandparent waiting with open arms. Whatever the reason, his face says something every human being recognizes. "I am safe."
It is one of the first feelings we ever learn. Long before children understand language, they learn faces. They discover the smile that means, Come here.The voice that means, Everything is all right. The arms that promise, I've got you.
Five thousand years ago, another little boy probably sat among these same stones. He didn't know they would one day become ancient. He didn't know visitors would marvel at the buildings around him. He was probably watching the people he loved. Listening to familiar voices. Feeling safe enough to laugh.
Sometimes we imagine the ancient world as a place filled only with hardship. Certainly life was difficult. But children still giggled. Parents still smiled. Grandparents still watched over little ones with quiet pride.
Love leaves few traces for archaeologists to uncover. It does not fossilize. It leaves no pottery shards. Yet it may be the strongest force that ever shaped our species.
Perhaps that is why this little boy seems so completely at home among these ancient stones. Not because they are old, but because the feeling on his face is older still.
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"Stone Age Magazine" shares stories inspired by the archaeology of the earliest chapters of human civilization – enhanced through anthropology, psychology, philosophy and modern parenthood.
BORROWED STONE
The carving was never all that large. Perhaps eighteen inches across. A single great circle surrounded by dozens of tiny raised dots, all framed within a carefully carved border. It is hard to look at it and not think of the moon floating among the stars.
A hundred years ago, archaeologists photographed it standing proudly on its own pedestal inside Tarxien Temple. Then, somehow, it disappeared. Years later I went looking for it. .. and found it! Not in the museum, where I expected it to be, but back among the stones of Tarxien itself. Finally I found it—not displayed, not protected, but quietly built into the back of a reconstructed wall, almost hidden from view. The carved design was still there if you knew where to look.
On my next visit......it was gone. Not stolen. Not shattered. Simply gone.
Limestone is patient. Rain, wind, salt, and time do what they have always done. The sharp edges soften. The tiny stars fade. Eventually the image returns to the earth from which it came. Perhaps that was always understood.
Flashback: an old stoneworker runs his hand across the finished carving while a child watches nearby.
"Will it last forever?" the child asks.
The old man smiles. "Nothing made by hands lasts forever."
"Then why carve it?"
The craftsman looks upward before answering. "Because for a little while, someone after us will see it and look up too."
Perhaps that is all any generation can hope to do. We like to think that history survives because stone survives. But history survives because someone chooses to notice, to remember, and to care before the stone is gone.
The moon still rises. The stars still fill the night. The carving that celebrated them has nearly returned to dust. Nature was never trying to preserve it. Nature was always reclaiming it.
For a brief moment, the people of Tarxien borrowed a piece of limestone and shaped it into an idea. Then they handed that idea to us. Our monuments, our books, our songs—even our memories—are all borrowed in much the same way.
Perhaps the real question is not how long stone can endure. Perhaps it is whether we will care for the stories long enough to pass them on before they, too, become part of the landscape.
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This stone is gone now.