hypogeum in Malta

Can anyone tell me about the hypogeum in malta?

The Hypogeum, just southwest of the Three Cities in the suburb of Paolo, is a labyrinthine complex of man-made chambers hewn out of limestone, extending about 36ft (11m) below the surface. Experts believe it was used as a burial site and temple by Neolithic man, who used antlers and stone picks to carve out the labyrinth in semi-darkness nearly 5,000 years ago. The site has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. Archaeologists have recovered numerous statues, amulets, figurines and vases, many of which are on display in the Archaelogy Museum in Valetta.

Taken from this site

linky


This is a wonderfull place one i have wanted to visit,
There has been alot of great discoverys there, do a search on google and you can find loads of info

heres another site that has pics

pics

For English archaeologist John Evans, who excavated prehistoric Maltese sites during the late 1940s and 1950s, the Mediterranean islands were "laboratories for the study of culture processes." On Malta the laboratory experiment took an unusual turn. Its Neolithic inhabitants began, like other Neolithic peoples, as simple farmers and herders but ended up building immense stone temples and digging equally immense subterranean sepulchres. Why this happened and why the temple builders abruptly stopped constructing temples after a millennium defy easy answers. An Anglo-Maltese project directed by David Trump of the University of Cambridge, Simon Stoddart and Caroline Malone (then of the University of Bristol), and the University of Malta's Anthony Bonanno has done much to sort out the evidence. Working on Gozo, they excavated Neolithic huts at Ghajnsielem in 1987 and underground burials, yielding hundreds of thousands of human bones, at Xaghra from 1988 to 1994. Using the new evidence and that from earlier studies, the Gozo Project archaeologists have devised a theory about how the temple building culture may have risen and collapsed. They see a shift from an early, egalitarian society, to a hierarchical one marked initially by competition among familes in trade with Sicily, followed by competition among chiefdoms in constructing temples for ritual use. Preoccupation with the temples, increasing population, greater agricultural uncertainty stemming from erosion, and declining links to Sicily left the culture on the brink of collapse. In time the temples were abandoned; the fate of their builders remains unknown.

This quote from an article is an interesting look that probes a little further into the Hypogeum...I've also read somewhere else, can't remember where, that they've been having problems with bird trappers in this region who set their cages for certain migratory birds at various spots around the many other temples that scatter the landscape - they were coming down on these guyss pretty hard from last I heard...

I heard about humanoid creatures living in the unexplored areas beneath the third level? can anyone verify this?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

should answer your question pathoftruth,




[edit on 3-7-2004 by asala]

Originally posted by pathoftruth
I heard about humanoid creatures living in the unexplored areas beneath the third level? can anyone verify this?

What? Like sasquatch...saskwatch...sax fith ave watch...aaarrr....BIGFOOT - lol

- I could devote a whole new thread to proof that these bad boys, or any other variation of the human species don't exist in modern day...despite a few neandertals - lol

[edit on 7/3/2004 by EnronOutrunHomerun]

[edit on 7/3/2004 by EnronOutrunHomerun]