Ancestors’ litter yields clues to ancient puzzle

A team of archaeologists led by Caroline Malone from Queen’s University, Belfast, is sifting through litter dumped thousands of years ago in what is thought to be Gozo’s first village at Taċ-Ċawla. And the cleaning habits of the Maltese do not seem to have changed much – the first residents used to keep their indoors spotless and, luckily for archaeologists, dump all their garbage outdoors. “This is a new area of scientific research because the environment and economic world of those ancient people has never been explored,” she said, describing Malta’s prehistoric civilisation as exceptional and unique. Malta has been chosen for a project in which archaeologists, delving back to the first occupation of Neolithic farmers around 5,000BC, are trying to solve an ancient puzzle: how do some cultures manage to sustain their civilisation for millennia when others collapse because of the changing environmental conditions? People first settled here about 7,000 years ago and, although the island was probably cleared of most of its vegetation within a few centuries, it supported a thriving, well-populated civilisation. By 3000BC the megalithic temples had been built and for the next 2,500...