Times Talk: The first Maltese people in history, unearthed

Times Talk was granted exclusive access to a groundbreaking discovery that has changed the history of Malta and the Mediterranean

A special episode of Times Talk is revealing an exclusive, first look into a groundbreaking discovery led by two Maltese archaeologists, which has altered the history of Malta and the Mediterranean.

In this episode, professors Eleanor Scerri and Nicholas Vella sit down with Times of Malta to explain how their team unearthed 8,500-year old remains from a cave in Mellieħa that confirmed there were humans in Malta at least a thousand years before the first farmers were thought to have arrived.

Filming: Matthew Mirabelli, Aya Lamtargi; Editing: Karl Andrew Micallef; Other footage courtesy of Charlie Cauchi / Sajjetta.

The discovery adds another chapter to Malta's prehistory and changes the global scientific community's understanding of the technological capabilities of hunter-gatherer communities at the time.

Earlier this week, just a few days before their discovery was published in one of the world's leading scientific journals Nature, Times Talk was granted access by the archaeologists to the unearthed remains that are now being housed at the University of Malta.

The episode features footage of several bones, stone tools and other human-made remains that led to the discovery, along with interviews with four of the researchers in their laboratory and at the Mellieħa cave where the remains were found.

Subscribe to the Times Talk podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.