Original subtitles

[narrator] The island of Malta

is home to one of the world's greatest ancient mysteries,

a 5,000-year-old temple dug deep into the Earth.

According to some, it was once home to an advanced culture,

capable of engineering marvels.

When you go down there in the dark,

you feel like you're connecting

with the origins of civilization itself.

[narrator] Inside, archeologists discovered the fragmented

remains of thousands of human bodies, including 11 bizarre skulls.

[woman] There was elongation.

Some were missing the cranial knitting.

[narrator] Since their discovery,

authorities have seemingly tried to hide the skulls from public view,

leading to some wild theories.

It makes you wonder why.

What makes them different? Are they from another world?

[narrator] What is the truth behind these mysterious skulls

found in one of the oldest structures in the world?

And who did they belong to?

[Tony] These small islands

hold one of the greatest ancient enigmas.

[theme music playing]

[narrator] These islands are home

to one of the strangest ancient temples ever discovered.

On the Maltese archipelago, formed by the islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino.

The town of Paola is a few miles outside the capital city.

In 1903, archeologists, led by Emmanuel Magri,

begin excavating a newly discovered buried structure.

Inside, they unearth a set of 11 strange skulls.

There must have been a shiver that went down their spine

when they found themselves in this very strange, odd underground place.

But then in their hands, they were holding a skull that barely looked human.

[narrator] But it wasn't just the discovery of the skulls

that had archeologists perplexed.

The underground complex in which they were found was also groundbreaking.

They named it the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum.

The hypogeum is a real mystery, you know,

beginning with how it was even created by this Neolithic culture

that just had stone tools, essentially.

[narrator] Today, the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum,

which means underground temple or tomb,

is a UNESCO World Heritage Site,

and despite a century of investigations,

little is known about this impressive subterranean complex.

Historian Silvia Debono has lived on the island of Malta

for the last 20 years and has closely studied the hypogeum and its secrets.

Just underneath these normal houses lies the hypogeum, 11 meters underground.

A series of caves and tunnels.

So if you were to drive by without knowing

that the hypogeum was here, you wouldn't even notice.

[narrator] Yet its true purpose remains a mystery,

and very little is known about the people who built it.

[Tony] The first thing that really strikes you about the hypogeum

is just how modern it looks.

I mean, it could almost be some kind of weird art deco building.

It just doesn't look like it was built by people in the Stone Age

with antlers and chisels made out of stone.

The hypogeum is built on three underground levels,

and as you descend downwards, it's like going into the belly of the world.

It's incredibly claustrophobic.

It's an ancient labyrinth with dozens of small chambers radiating off it,

many of which are decorated with intricate

and mysterious symbols that we still haven't deciphered.

The discovery of the hypogeum have found that

this was a highly sophisticated, advanced civilization

who incorporated not only brilliant stone carving techniques,

but also acoustics into the design of their temples.

[Janina] Within the hypogeum, there is the oracle room where the acoustics,

um, are so carefully refined that if you whisper in the center,

it amplifies the sound.

[Tony] Some people believe that it's built to generate 111 hertz to be exact,

which is the kind of frequency

that apparently produces endorphins in human beings.

[Dominic] This has been proven scientifically

that actually affects your consciousness.

And so was that the purpose?

[narrator] Yet few people get the chance

to experience this astonishing structure.

Access to the hypogeum is so limited

and restricted that it's impossible

to walk in from the street to the site.

The official reason given is that it's to protect the microclimate within it

and the wall paintings, but it has made a lot of people wonder

if there's something that's been kept secret.

[narrator] While limited access to the hypogeum

has added a layer of mystery to the structure,

it's what's inside that's baffled scholars for a century.

The thing that struck archeologists straightaway was this film of red,

and it's covered the whole space.

When archeologists started to get down into this red soil

and investigate it, what they found were the skeletal

remains of 7,000 people.

The remains puzzled them because the bones weren't arranged as bodies.

They seem to be distributed around the caves in a completely random way,

as if there were no logic to it.

And among them is a group of 11 skulls

which really defy explanation to some people's minds.

[narrator] In 1903, archeologist Emmanuel Magri

and his team were able to salvage the 11 near-complete skulls,

but soon after research was brought to a halt.

Sharon Sultana is the senior curator

at the Museum of Archeology in Malta,

which houses the mysterious skulls.

Whilst, um, Magri was excavating the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum,

he was sent to Tunisia on another expedition.

And unfortunately, for us, Magri died there

and none of the excavation notebooks were ever found.

It is quite a problem that we don't have Emmanuel Magri's original notebook

because those would have been the first excavations that were carried out,

so giving an insight of how things were really, really found.

[narrator] In 1907, archeologist Temi Zammit

takes over Magri's excavation and makes a startling discovery.

All the ancient skulls were long-headed.

[Karen] What do we mean when we say long-headed skulls?

It's when the width of a skull is less than 75% of the length of the skull,

and it's actually a very rare proportion

found in the human population overall.

[Peggy] The Maltese skulls, mathematically,

they are so long that they are unusual

because we know what the human skull looks like

or should look like.

It is off-putting for many people

to come across a unique version of that skull.

It makes you wonder why. What makes them different?

Are they actually not like us? Are they from another world?

Unusually shaped skulls of itself is not actually unique.

Cultures have performed head binding around the world,

right up until the 20th century.

[narrator] Head binding or artificial cranial modification

has been seen across the globe throughout history.

It might sound barbaric.

In fact, it was a practice

that had to be performed in the first two years of life,

and the skull would be essentially compressed

between boards perhaps and bound tightly with a piece of fabric.

And this wasn't done as a punishment.

In fact, it was generally done to distinguish the individual as special.

[narrator] Head binding might be a perfectly

rational explanation for long-headedness,

although only one of the 11 skulls shows a squash-like shape,

a possible sign of having been head bound.

The rare skull structure could be a clue

as to what long-headedness represented to this lost culture.

[Karen] Given that one of these skulls shows an artificial manipulation

to achieve the long-headed look,

it raises the possibility that the skulls that are present in the hypogeum

were associated with high status individuals in this society.

We know that many cultures around the world,

this was linked with elites,

but also it could have had a practical purpose

and this could have been to affect the brain chemistry and the pineal gland.

If you're stretching it and moving things around in the head,

it could produce different psychic abilities.

It proves you're a semi-divine being.

[narrator] More elongated skulls

have been found across these islands.

Further evidence for their purpose could lie in the sites

where these anomalies were found,

including one of the oldest structures on Earth.

What can these mysterious skulls

reveal about this lost civilization?

[narrator] In Malta's 5,000-year-old Hal Saflieni Hypogeum,

11 strange elongated skulls have been found.

Who they belong to is a mystery.

But they aren't the only remains left behind by a lost civilization.

Other traces of these ancient inhabitants

can be found across the Maltese islands.

Malta is actually home to some of the very oldest ritual building

that we've ever identified in the world.

Temples that stretch back to 6,000 years

and are incredibly sophisticated in their construction.

[narrator] Although a handful of the ancient megalithic temples

have been identified, remains from dozens more structures

can be found across Malta and Gozo.

There are megalithic structures all over Europe,

but it's the fact that there's so many on Malta

in such a small space that makes one wonder

whether this island has some kind of sacred significance.

[narrator] Ggantija on the small island of Gozo

is the oldest recorded temple on the Maltese archipelago.

[Silvia] This temple was built by the same people

who built the hypogeum, and these are what we call the "temple people."

These temples, they are older than the pyramids of Egypt.

They are older than Stonehenge in England.

And at that time, there were no tools,

no machinery that we know today.

We have to remember we're just seeing virtually nothing of what was there.

They would have been much grander,

much more precision engineered.

[narrator] Erected with nothing more than wood and stone tools,

these buildings would have required a mass effort from the population.

Relatively speaking, Gozo is pretty small.

The population today is only 32,000 people.

So if we go back to when the temple was built,

it would almost certainly have been a communal effort

of virtually everybody on the island.

[narrator] Although built hundreds of years earlier,

the layout of Ggantija seems to have inspired

the curved configuration of the hypogeum,

one of the last temples to be built on these islands.

[Karen] There's a walkway, there's chambers,

there's an altar in a very regular location.

And what's really fascinating is when researchers examined the hypogeum,

in comparison, there were a lot of similar features found.

[Silvia] You can find here some of the spiral decorations carved out by these people.

These spiral decorations are also found in the hypogeum in Hal Saflieni,

and probably they are symbolizing the continuity of life.

[narrator] A serpent depiction

was originally found at the entrance to Ggantija.

In fact, these snake-like spirals adorn

all of the remaining Maltese temples.

Perhaps it was an important symbol to this ancient culture.

Because written documentation doesn't exist from this time period,

clues found inside the temple walls are open to interpretation.

There are some evidence found around some other temples

that might shed light on these rituals performed here.

[Karen] Artifacts that were found in the hypogeum

include a beautiful statue of a woman reclining as if she were sleeping.

[narrator] The sleeping lady has often been interpreted

as representing the goddess of fertility,

an important deity for the temple people.

We can always imagine that if these people at one point,

they were worshiping the goddess of fertility,

most probably they would have performed such rituals as orgies in these temples.

[narrator] Another common hypothesis

is that the sleeping lady personifies death and the eternal.

This might explain the ancient remains found

near the temple site of Ggantija.

Five hundred yards away from the temple,

30 more long-headed skulls were found.

That goes to show that long-headed people

probably were around everywhere in this archipelago.

[narrator] So who was this ancient population that built these astonishing structures?

And were they all long-headed?

[Karen] The human cranium has a general shape, which is universal.

Within the human population at large,

that's going to vary between extremes,

with certain shapes prevailing

and having a genetic propensity

to be passed on in a given community.

And to me, that's enough to explain the presence of these long-headed skulls.

[Janina] Malta, of course, is an island

that would have created a population that was relatively inbred.

So if there was a characteristic trait,

it would be accentuated in that sort of an environment.

[narrator] But many people in Malta believe there's more to it.

Taxi driver Emilio Persiano knows every corner of these islands.

According to him, some claim that the sophistication of the temple structures,

along with the skulls found at the hypogeum,

can only be attributed to otherworldly beings.

[Emilio speaking]

[narrator] Hoping to solve this mystery once and for all, Dr. Anton Mifsud,

a pediatrician by profession, has spent the last 36 years

investigating the hypogeum's elongated skulls.

It all started when one skull, named Saflieni 11, sparked his interest.

When I saw the skulls for the first time, I was fascinated by Saflieni number 11.

The skull number 11 was a mystery to me

because I could not explain it.

[narrator] For over a century,

the discovery in Malta of 11 strange skulls

dating back 5,000 years has confounded experts.

Dr. Anton Mifsud has been researching the skulls for four decades.

He's one of few people to have attempted

to provide an explanation for their strange appearance.

In 1985, my father gave me a camera

and I wanted to try it on and I was interested in the museums, so I went.

There were six skulls being displayed,

and there was this particular one which... which struck me.

It had these huge orbital bosses here,

and I photographed it from all angles

and then thought I would study it.

I was a medical doctor.

We're different from archeologists.

We spend about two years of our lives

just studying the anatomy, so we know the skull inside out.

So whenever I see something

that is far out of the ordinary, I mean, you're...

you're amazed.

Why were our ancestors in this shape?

What... what's made them have this shape?

I mean, why are their foreheads so pronounced?

[narrator] Today, the skulls are housed

at the Museum of Archeology, but that's not the full story.

[Anton] Initially, there were 11 skulls,

so we don't know when their numbers started to dwindle,

but certainly between 1955 and between '59,

there was no real Museum of Archeology.

There was no transitional phase.

During that time, five went missing.

We don't know why.

In my view, there were a lot of undesirable specimens

that were taken off of the radar.

They just disappeared.

[narrator] Anton has never had the chance

to study the five missing skulls.

Just getting access to the remaining six was difficult

and required him to work around years of red tape.

After the photographs I had taken,

they were taken off the shelves of the museum where they were displayed.

Access was totally impossible.

There was this whole debate going on about having,

um, human remains on display in museums.

So I think the authorities back then wanted to be cautious,

and they, you know, removed all the skeleton material,

which was on display and they put it in storage.

I published this photograph of these skulls in 1999,

and after that there were a number of people who were interested

and who tried to get access to them to see this long-headed skull.

[narrator] It was clear from the photos published by Anton

that the skulls look strangely elongated,

combined with limited access, it added fuel to the fire.

Theories started to come up.

They were... were they aliens?

Were they from another continent?

The Maltese authorities have been very protective,

shall we say, about these skulls.

I mean, really, the more they do that,

the more they're engendering suspicion and mistrust.

That was disturbing the prevailing paradigm of the time,

and they wouldn't have that happening.

So could it be that the authorities are just too terrified

to find out that human history may have to be rewritten?

Could these skulls be an absolute revelation

as to who we are and where we came from?

[narrator] It's only been in the past decade

that the skulls have been made accessible for viewing,

but speculation continued.

People coming to the museum to see these Hal Saflieni Hypogeum skulls

were expecting to see long head bound skulls.

But in reality, the skulls are what they are.

So people started saying that the museum

was hiding the real skulls from the hypogeum,

and the government is making us hide them for security reasons.

What we have tried to do is study these skulls

and give access to the public so that then people can decide for themselves.

[narrator] Today, Anton is working

with the National Museum of Archeology in Malta

to further scientific research into the skulls

and get to the bottom of who their Maltese ancestors really were.

But why are these remains so strange?

Anton's medical background has helped him uncover

some of the truth behind their appearance.

Now this is Saflieni number 11,

and I think it was responsible for all the various theories of aliens.

It possesses certain anatomical features,

which are not usually present on a human.

Now chief among which was the long-headedness,

it's one of the most long heads of the hypogeum skulls.

Apart from that, it does not possess a sagittal suture here,

which is normally present on skulls.

[Dominic] Because the skull develops at the same rate over the person's lifetime,

it's very odd to find the skull

with one suture still prominent, but the other not visible.

[narrator] How is this possible?

Are there any scientific explanations for this strange skull?

[narrator] Dr. Anton Mifsud has spent the last four decades

researching the strange Hal Saflieni Hypogeum skulls.

His medical background has helped him uncover the truth behind their appearance.

One of them, named Saflieni 11,

is missing the sagittal suture, a seemingly impossible trait.

On a skull, the cranial sutures are the lines

that one usually seeds.

One goes from left to right over the top of the skull,

and the other goes from that line all the way down to the back.

[narrator] When a baby is born,

the plates that form the cranium

have not yet fused, making the sutures very visible.

[Dominic] But as the plates fuse,

the lines become less and less distinct.

So in much older people, the lines could almost have disappeared.

[narrator] Remarkably, on skull number 11,

the coronal suture, from left to right,

is evidently open, but the sagittal suture is absent.

In rare instances, one suture can fuse prematurely,

such as when a skull is head bound in infancy.

But head binding only accounts for some of the skulls' anomalies.

For the rest, Anton has another explanation,

which lies in a medical condition called thalassemia.

Thalassemia, it means anemia of the Mediterranean.

It's a disease in response to malaria.

What happens in malaria is that a mosquito bites the human being

and injects the baby malaria parasites inside the bloodstream

and they mature inside the red cells of the human.

A red cell will last 120 days before it's destroyed.

So that gives the parasite sufficient time to grow, mature, burst

and then cause the malaria.

[narrator] To counter this process,

the body has adapted and produced another sort of red blood cell,

known as hemoglobin F.

It will cause blood cells to break up earlier,

preventing the parasite from maturing inside them

and killing the infected individual.

But to counterbalance the rapid destruction of blood cells,

the body has to produce more and more of them.

This process takes place inside the bone marrow.

[Anton] If you go to the front of the skull,

you will see that there are very prominent eyebrows there,

which reflect a higher degree of blood regeneration.

[narrator] Because the increase of blood cells in the bone marrow

causes it to expand and thicken,

some of the facial features will become more prominent.

According to Anton's observations,

all the remaining skulls from the hypogeum show evidence of thalassemia.

Although thalassemia does not explain long-headedness,

it does explain some of the features of the skulls,

particularly on skull number 11.

It would certainly have had an appearance that was really noticeable.

He would have a high, a large skull.

It would have very prominent eyebrows here, a very high cheekbones.

The eyes would therefore be deeply inset

because of the jaundice associated

with the breakdown of the red cells.

He would also be yellow.

He would have been weak because of the rapid turnover of red cells.

[narrator] Further scientific analysis

carried out on a Neolithic skull

confirmed Anton's theory that the disease

was present on the islands at the time.

Now we're looking here at a skull,

a normal skull, of a 5,000-year-old individual.

Now this is where the blood is formed.

But with a thalassemic patient,

the width is comparatively larger.

[narrator] Surprisingly, Anton believes that this disease

may have been an asset for these affected individuals.

They had no physical strength, but they had the brains.

Their brains were receiving a lot of blood,

and they might have been in a better position to use their brains.

So they were the... the masterminds.

I believe that the people with thalassemia,

with their striking features, were enrolled as serpent priests.

The serpent priest was basically the communication

between the divine and the human.

They were the intermediaries.

[narrator] According to Anton, these highly intelligent serpent priests,

with their supposed reptilian appearance,

would have been the ruling elite

of the ancient people of Malta.

So what these serpent priests would have looked like is really interesting.

We see some figurines that are actually on display in certain museums

that show a kind of snake-like appearance on their face.

So what I'm holding here

is actually a part of the skull of a serpent priest

of late Neolithic Malta, 5,000 years ago.

I made a study of all the remains of Neolithic people

and I managed to find now, 97% of them were long-headed.

But the elite, I consider the ones who had the thalassemia,

because apart from being long-headed,

they had these striking features.

[Hugh] They had a mastery of things like medicine, astronomy.

If we actually look at some of the carvings,

even the 3D relief carvings we find all over Malta and Gozo,

we see serpents depicted everywhere.

They were called serpent priests

because part of their function was healing.

[Dominic] To pretty much as long as we know,

the snake has been a symbol of healing,

and it's even today used around the world

as a symbol of medicine and pharmacies.

[Anton] It's also symbolized the link between us

and the world underground because the snake slithers.

[narrator] Were these serpent priests really as advanced as experts say?

According to Anton, one of the hypogeum skulls

still bears evidence of these highly-skilled healers.

One of these skulls demonstrated signs of a successful operation,

and this sounds incredibly frightening for this time period.

The operation is known as trepanation.

Trepanation is a hole in the skull.

Trepanning would be carried out

because there was maybe some kind of pressure

that had built up in the head that the person was experiencing enormous pain.

They may even have been having fits of some kind, epilepsy,

and there was just a belief that by boring into the head,

they may have relieved physical pressure or they may have released,

they felt, some kind of demon that was lurking within the patient.

[Anton] As you can see, the defect here

is underlined by growth of bone here.

So this shows that the individual survived an operation

that is considered today to be a dangerous one.

Just imagine, no anesthetic, no surgical conditions,

somebody drilling into your head with a Stone Age tool of flint

or obsidian knife or something like that, and you survive.

[narrator] These risky operations would have been conducted

by the serpent priests inside the temple,

up until it was mysteriously abandoned.

[Anton] So from the earliest times,

the temple was used by the serpent priests

to affect healing procedures on late Neolithic Maltese

and also interpret dreams maybe,

perform surgery like trepanation.

This serpent elite, these were the designers

and the instigators of creating all these ancient temples.

They may not have built them themselves,

they may have got other people involved.

They may have got the local populace.

The hypogeum is the last megalithic temple to be built.

There were three zones.

There was the zone for the public.

Then there was intermediate zone

where the public communicated with the priests.

And there was the third zone which only confined to the priests.

[narrator] So if Anton is correct,

these skulls belong to the serpent priests who ruled over the population.

But why were no more temples built after the hypogeum was completed,

and what happened to the serpent priests and the temple people?

[narrator] Five thousand years ago, an advanced culture

was thriving on the island of Malta.

The remains of the temples they left behind

demonstrate a sophistication beyond

what modern-day experts would have expected for that time period.

But this civilization seems to have vanished without a trace.

The Neolithic people built the temples around about 2600 BC.

These structures were used for over 1,000 years.

Then something happened.

These temples stopped being used, completely,

and there was a period on the islands

where we think that there was no population.

It could be that they depleted the resources

and they probably had to move on, or a catastrophe

of some sort happened on the island and they died.

[narrator] Discoveries made at Hal Saflieni Hypogeum

might give us an insight into what really happened.

They found a fascinating collection of Neolithic artifacts,

but also the bones of what they thought were around 7,000 people.

[Anton] It was just a whole jumble of bones, human bones,

implements, pottery, all mixed together

with no anatomical relationship between parts.

So how is it that the remains of potentially 7,000 people,

plus these elongated skulls were found in the hypogeum?

The jury's out as to what really happened to them.

Now, even the archeologists themselves admit

there was no evidence of warfare.

There was no evidence of any disease

that wiped them out, like COVID.

[narrator] In 1907, when the excavation was carried out,

archeologist Temi Zammit determined that

it was impossible to calculate the true number of bodies due to the deterioration.

Yet based on the number of bones found,

he estimated there could be 7,000 disjointed bodies inside the hypogeum,

but to Zammit's trained eye, the space was too small

for that number of people to be buried.

You don't even think it was a primary burial site.

We probably think that the bodies were placed there afterwards.

It was probably an underground sanctuary,

which was then used as a burial place.

Since the place has three different levels,

probably each level was used for a different purpose.

[narrator] For Anton, the random layout of human bones

and pottery might be a clue as to how the population disappeared.

During the excavation, there was only one skeleton

that was anatomically aligned.

Now, Temi Zammit described the posture of the person.

He was not buried on his left side as is traditional Maltese Neolithic burials,

but he's laying on his right side

and his hand is right up here was clenched,

was flexed and in this position.

Now that in medical forensic medicine

is known as cadaveric spasm and implies a very emotional death,

and it's typically by drowning.

So that was implied that the person was the only one

who was anatomically disposed was at the time inside the hypogeum

when flood waters came down.

[narrator] So could the drowned man be the key

to how the whole population disappeared?

[Anton] There's evidence for a tsunami.

About 4,200 years ago there was a tsunami

which came from the northeast

and that is attested to by modern geologists.

The tsunami came and whatever was inside the hypogeum

went down to the lower layers and the people on the ground were wiped out.

There was no trace.

Now we have to imagine that person in the hypogeum at the point

at which it was filling with seawater,

as the tsunami crashed across Malta,

the terror, the realization you're going to die,

the inability to escape from this space.

[Anton] Dr. Zammit in 1907, he described it as a homogenous mass of red soil

that contained all these various objects of human bones

and instruments and pottery, and that indicated

what is called an alluvial deposit.

An alluvial deposit is a deposit that's created by water,

and that could explain why we see the motley collection

of bones and pottery in the hypogeum,

because if they built up over time,

we would expect to see them layered.

[narrator] According to Anton,

the bones of ancestors would have been initially displayed

in the upper level of the hypogeum,

placed in a specific formation and exposed to the worshipers visiting the temple.

The floodwaters carried the soil from the surface.

There were bones at the top, being displayed there.

The whole thing came down

and the person was down in the second layer

and was obviously flooded and drowned.

[narrator] Despite rational explanations,

over the past century, legends surrounding the hypogeum

have added to the mystery of ancient Malta.

[narrator] Since the discovery of the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum

at the turn of the 20th century, strange stories

and eyewitness accounts have circulated,

adding an aura of mystery to the ancient temple.

[Tony] There's a story told on Malta about a group of schoolkids

who went with their teacher to visit the hypogeum in the 1940s.

Now this is the time when it wasn't as well-organized

with all the health and safety stuff that you get there today,

and they ventured deeper and deeper down

into the hypogeum until they disappeared.

Nobody was able to see them, calling out to them resulted in nothing.

They simply vanished.

And yet some people say that for weeks afterwards,

they were able to hear the cries of the children crying out for help,

but nobody knew how to get to them.

It sounds a little bit embellished, if you ask me.

You can't just have a number of schoolchildren

and their teachers disappear in your heritage site

without an investigation properly being made.

[narrator] From the lack of eyewitness accounts,

it's hard to know what really happened to these children,

and whether this is an urban legend.

But this is not the only claim about strange things happening inside the hypogeum.

Around the same time, a woman named Lois Jessup told a chilling story.

Lois Jessup, who was involved in exploring some of the underground caverns,

which go further beyond the hypogeum that you see today,

and the story she claims were witnessed these kind of fair-skinned,

blond-haired giants inside the hypogeum,

who scared her so much, she ran out.

So these are kind of connected these stories

that not only are there kind of potentially humanoid beings

who were giants living in the hypogeum,

but also kids have disappeared in there and never to be found again.

So what do we make of these stories?

I think these kind of legends or stories

are made as to stop people in that time to go down the hypogeum.

[narrator] These tales and legends

might live on for years to come.

But for most experts, credit should really be given

to the ancient Maltese who built these long-lasting temples.

All of these speculations about other worldly influence aside,

these temples and the hypogeum, I mean, they...

they are absolute wonders of the world.

There is something quite mysterious about the hypogeum.

The way that this space has been created to house extraordinary human bones,

these elongated skulls,

they do tap into our innate desire

for unsolved mysteries.

It's human nature to ponder about these mysteries,

particularly when it's about our ancient ancestors

that don't look like us anymore.

People tend to associate prehistoric people with savage cavemen,

but from what we have on the islands, dating to that period,

we have a completely different picture.

These people were people like us with needs like us,

with feelings like us, you know?

They just didn't have the resources that we have nowadays.

But in my opinion, they left us, Maltese, a legacy

which we should all really be proud of.

Malta deserves more credit

and more acknowledgment of its ancient culture.

But the extinction of the Maltese temple culture

was so massive that it's been totally forgotten and...

and cast into oblivion.

[Dominic] Details of lives that long ago can seem very out of reach,

but archeology, in fact moves very quickly,

and it only takes a few discoveries

to unlock far richer contexts around things

that happened in the past.

So although we may not know much about them now,

it is very likely that in the future we will get a lot closer to them

and understand far more about their world.

[narrator] With ongoing scientific research

and recent technological advances,

experts might soon be able to unlock some of Malta's ancient secrets.

Until then, debates surrounding the mystical hypogeum

and the Neolithic human remains will continue.