Several 5000-year-old temples in Malta seem to have been oriented towards specific stars, suggesting the temples could have been schools for celestial navigation.
Ancient people constructed seven temples across the Maltese archipelago from 3800 to 2300 BC. Fashioned from large, cut stones weighing several tonnes, the complexes are among the earliest megalithic structures ever built.
“Most researchers agree that the temples display features associated with ritual behaviour,” says at the University of Malta. Many contain abundant animal and human remains, suggesting that ancient people used them to host feasts or sacrifices. One site held over 220,000 human bones.
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Prior research found that many of the temples share a similar orientation, facing south or south-east. One such temple, called Mnajdra, aligns precisely to fill with light during solstices and equinoxes.
While researchers have proposed many hypotheses to explain the unique orientation of the temples, the exact explanation has remained elusive.
“The temples may have been oriented at random or to follow the slope of the land,” says at Bournemouth University, UK. “Other hypotheses suggested the temples were built to maximise daylight or avoid strong winds.”
Silva and his colleague , also at the University of Malta, took measurements of 32 megalithic structures on the islands of Malta and Gozo and used statistical modelling to test several hypotheses against each other, including whether the temples were oriented randomly, to avoid wind, to align with the natural landscapes or to look at certain stars in the night sky.
“We found out that none of the terrestrial explanations account for the orientation,” says Silva. Instead, many temples appear to capture the rising and setting of specific southern stars, including Hadar, which is part of the constellation Centaurus; Gacrux, which is part of the Southern Cross; and Avior, which is part of the False Cross.
“These stars are notable for being used for navigation purposes by a number of cultures,” says Silva.
He believes the temples may be similar to “stone canoes” used by ancient Polynesian people to teach celestial navigation to young seafarers. These canoe-shaped stones were aimed at important stars and would help novice voyagers learn how to read the night sky like a map.
“Unroofed corridors [in the temples] provided the perfect simulacra of being at open sea whilst still safely inland,” says Silva. “The temple entrance then framed a specific part of the horizon where these important navigational stars rose or set.”
Groucutt is open to the possibility that Malta’s ancient people used stars to navigate the sea, but he suspects the south-facing temples were built to maximise daylight and minimise exposure to strong northerly winds.
“Clearly, some temples were built with celestial factors in mind,” says Groucutt. “However, this is seemingly an exception and not the rule.”
In future research, Silva would like scientists to adopt his team’s statistical modelling approach to test other ancient buildings for potential celestial orientations.
“Only by exploring [all] options will we get a firmer grasp of the purpose of the Maltese temples as a whole,” says Silva.
Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences
