Malta archaeological find hits the world’s headlines
Ground-breaking discovery proving first humans settled on island more than 1,000 years than previously thought was revealed last week
A discovery showing humans first settled on Malta more than 1,000 years than previously thought has made headlines across the world, also capturing the attention of the scientific community.
The ground-breaking discovery, announced last week, proved that, contrary to the long-held belief that Malta was settled by farmers, hunter-gatherers had arrived on the islands more than a millennium earlier, around 8,500 years ago.
The discovery also challenged the global scientific community’s understanding of what early human communities were capable of, with scientists having previously thought they did not reach small and remote islands.
Reported extensively in the Maltese media the day of publication in the prestigious international science journal Nature, the findings have since featured in scores of international publications.
One of the lead researchers on the team, Eleanor Scerri, appeared on BBC World Service radio programme Science in Action to explain the findings that also saw UK coverage in national newspaper The Telegraph.
The discovery also featured in German national newspapers Die Welt and Spiegel and a host of other European publications across Spain, France, Italy and Israel.
Researchers said the news had also been covered by TV stations in the Netherlands and Sweden and featured in prominent science journals Science magazine, Discover Magazine and Scientific American.
Researchers Huw Groucutt and Eleanor Scerri were pleasantly surprised by the attention their discovery received. Photos: Huw Groucutt/Matthew Mirabelli'We've only just scratched the surface'
According to Nature metrics provided by Altmetric, the research paper has been viewed around 22,000 times, putting it in the top 1% of recent articles published in science journals across the world.
Scerri said it was “really fantastic” to see the findings being reported internationally, adding it was “great that tiny Malta has brought to life the skills of those people living thousands of years ago”.
She explained how popular notions of hunter-gatherers being “primitive and uncivilised” were “completely wrong”, stressing the recent discovery was evidence of the sophisticated navigation techniques needed for the 100km voyage to Malta.
“I think it’s completely captured people’s imagination that they undertook such a long journey,” she said, calling the findings a “milestone in the story of how humans populated the planet”.
Fellow researcher Huw Groucutt said the response to the findings was “amazing; it’s quite rare for an archaeology story to have such global reach, but everyone likes stories about adventures”.
He said that although the team thought the discoveries would “create quite a splash, we didn’t expect this... It’s really satisfying to see it being taken up so much”.
Despite the popularity of the findings, however, he stressed the discovery was “just the beginning; it’s a huge site and we’ve only just scratched the surface. This one site will keep us busy for decades, and there must be other sites too; these people didn’t just live on one site in Mellieħa for over 1,000 years,” he said.