Giants Among Us? Malta’s Unexplained Megaliths

Bright Side

Did you know that some people believe giants built the ancient temples in Malta? These temples, like Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra, are over 5,000 years old and made from massive stone blocks that seem impossible to move without modern technology. Because of their size and mystery, legends say that giants once roamed the island and were the only ones strong enough to build them. While archaeologists think they were made by humans, using basic tools and clever engineering, the giant stories still capture imaginations. The temples are older than the pyramids, making them one of the oldest structures on Earth. Whether giants were involved or not, Malta’s temples are definitely amazing!

Transcript

00:00Now, we wouldn't call this island mystical unless there were tales of giants living here.

00:06The island of Gauzo in Malta is the backdrop of an ancient legend.

00:11Malta is an island country located in the Mediterranean Sea, just south of Europe.

00:16It's a very strategically located archipelago.

00:19Throughout history, it was ruled by many different societies,

00:22such as the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians.

00:26One cold night, thousands of years ago, a farmer noticed the sky turn orange, then red, when he heard a loud thump.

00:36Although the ground seemed to be moving, this wasn't an earthquake.

00:39When he looked toward the woods, he saw a giant silhouette, taller than the trees.

00:45As he fearfully approached, he realized it was a woman, a giant woman.

00:50She introduced herself as Sansuna.

00:52Unlike the terrible giants of many tales, Sansuna didn't want to exterminate the human race.

00:59She was loving and caring.

01:01She told the farmer that she and her people could help protect their land from invaders.

01:05The locals were pretty interested in this offer.

01:08Since Malta is located in an important commercial route, it was constantly being invaded.

01:13The story says that Sansuna settled in Malta.

01:19And sooner rather than later, she was moving things around.

01:23And when I say things, I mean monoliths.

01:26Sansuna carried huge stones on her shoulder to build a magnificent temple called Gigatia, which means place of giants.

01:34She even did this while holding her half-giant, half-human kid on the other shoulder.

01:38Some say Sansuna lived exclusively on beans and honey, although others replaced honey with water.

01:46The funniest bit here is that Malta is the 10th smallest country in the world.

01:50But it somehow managed to host giants.

01:53Hey, go figure.

01:54The temple looked like a giant game of Tetris, with some stones weighing as much as 20 elephants.

02:01Some of these monolithic rocks are so heavy, scholars guess it would take 50 men working together to lift just one stone.

02:09Now, as much as this is entertaining, humans never proved giants were real.

02:13So, this story couldn't be true.

02:16There's a brief mention of a species of giants called the Nephilim in some ancient texts.

02:21The Nephilans would have been terrible giants that wreaked havoc on the Earth and only survived until the Great Flood.

02:27But nobody ever found real proof of this species really existing on Earth.

02:32Until this came along.

02:34The world of Maltese archaeology unearthed quite a few shocking things in the past years.

02:40One of them are known as the Hypogeum skulls.

02:44Hypogeum is the Greek word for underground, and this incredible site was discovered in the first decade of the 20th century.

02:50Back then, Malta's National Museum director received an important phone call.

02:56Someone had accidentally dug some impressive bones and asked him to come check it out.

03:01The Hypogeum looked like an underground city, filled with mazes and rooms that stretched along multiple floors.

03:08They were all made with similar limestones, as the Maltese temples above ground.

03:13The Hypogeum was filled with important relics and artifacts.

03:17Scientists quickly understood that the Hypogeum was built as a type of final resting place for locals.

03:22So, along with skulls, they found a lot of bones and skeletons.

03:27One of these artifacts were skulls.

03:29But these weren't regular human skulls.

03:32Rather, they were of the elongated type.

03:35To make matters worse, these skulls were hidden from the public for years.

03:39People started to talk and created a bunch of theories behind it.

03:43The truth is that this discovery was a turning point for Maltese archaeology,

03:48although scientists didn't know what to do with it.

03:50Some wondered if these skulls were natural or manipulated,

03:54since they knew some cultures in the world used headbinds to alter their skulls.

03:59Other scientists threw in the hypothesis of little gray people or even the legendary giants.

04:04Some say that the elongated skulls could have been sculptures that worshipped otherworldly deities.

04:10There was no way to confirm any of these theories.

04:13So, the question remained.

04:15Who were the builders of Malta's megalithic temples?

04:18Now, let's take a look at what scientists know.

04:22The Maltese megalithic temples have been standing strong since 3500 BCE,

04:28which is even older than the pyramids of Egypt.

04:30The main dilemma here is that these temples were built even before we invented writing.

04:36Yet, they required advanced technological skills to exist.

04:40The Gigantia Temple seems too absurd to have been built by humans.

04:44The South Temple has a corridor with four oval rooms on the sides, looking like a big shamrock leaf.

04:51In one of these rooms, scientists found altars, decorated with spiral patterns.

04:56It looked like an altar of some sort, indicating early Maltese people used them for ritualistic purposes.

05:02The North Temple is similar, but smaller, with a very low entrance that makes people crouch down to get inside.

05:09You get it?

05:10You need to bow down to their deities in order to get into this sacred place.

05:14I mean, one can't help but wonder about the secret reasons these ancient builders had to build such a huge temple.

05:21I'm thinking they probably cast one of Daenerys' dragons to move the monoliths around.

05:26Yeah, I'm joking here.

05:27But hey, remember the entrance to King's Landing?

05:30Yup, the series used the Medina Gates in Malta as the exterior of King's Landing during Episode 3 of Season 1.

05:38Anyways, back to the giants.

05:41The ritualistic theory of the whole thing won a few points when archaeologists uncovered these mysterious figures.

05:47They're popularly known as Fat Ladies.

05:50These tiny statues have round bodies and faces that show how much they enjoyed life.

05:55They kind of look like a miniature Sunsana, the giantess we talked about.

06:00Scientists believe these were statues that celebrated well-being and prosperity.

06:05It does prove that the people of the time had advanced craftsmanship skills,

06:09and they were pretty intentional with their constructions and art manifestations.

06:14One of these statues is known as the Sleeping Lady.

06:17This Neolithic piece of art depicts the figure of a large woman lying on her side, sleeping.

06:23After studying it deeper, scientists guessed this statue was meant to represent the Great Reaper.

06:30It was found in the Hypogeum, which we now know was a huge resting place.

06:34This specific statue is different from all the other fat ladies, starting with the hair and the embroidered skirt.

06:41Then there's this statue.

06:43This is supposed to represent an 8-foot-tall woman and the rim of her skirt.

06:47She was discovered in the most unusual of ways.

06:51A farmer was trying to plow his field, but he kept hitting large blocks of stone.

06:55All the way back in 1915, the farmer called Malta's National Museum director and asked him to come check it out.

07:03Some think this is all the proof you need to confirm that Sunsana was real.

07:08Others aren't all that sure.

07:09But that's not all.

07:12The place where this giant statue was buried revealed one of Malta's most impressive archaeological sites, the Tarjan Temples.

07:20The temples were made from limestone blocks.

07:23Some are 20 feet tall and weigh around 20 tons.

07:26Zamet, the museum director, kept digging and discovered multiple sites made of megalithic stones.

07:32All of them, supposedly built by Stone Age farmers, all stranded on a remote island in the Mediterranean Sea thousands of years ago.

07:41It just doesn't make sense.

07:43I mean, look at these temples in Menedra.

07:45This is probably the world's earliest calendar.

07:47On the equinoxes, the Sun passes directly through the main doorway, straight down the central axis.

07:54On the solstices, there are two superb variations.

07:57During the summer solstice, the rays fall on the edge of the megalith to the left of the doorway.

08:03And during the winter, the rays fall to the right side of the doorway.

08:07It's astronomical precision at its finest.

08:10And what about the structures in the Hall Tarsian that we've already talked about?

08:15This complex is the oldest one in all of Malta.

08:18It was built with the purpose of doing animal offerings to deities.

08:22Scientists confirm this by unearthing numerous animal bones buried in the soil.

08:27They also found a great collection of spirals, indicating that the locals also used this temple for ritualistic purposes.

08:35Overall, there are seven megalithic temples in Malta, each more impressive than the other.

08:41Scholars keep on digging to see if they can uncover the truth,

08:44much like researchers do with the pyramids of Egypt, the lost Mayan cities in the Americas, and other sites.

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