Treasures with Bettany Hughes

-I'm traveling the world, exploring secrets and wonders.

An adventure of discovery to try to understand the story of humanity.

I can't believe I've been allowed down here.

Ugh!

This is absolutely incredible.

Islands can offer escape, sanctuary, encourage resilience in the face of adversity, and allow civilizations to meet.

Today, the island of Malta.

Its story is unique and brilliantly rich, so I'm very lucky to get to explore it.

At only 17 miles across, Malta may be the world's 10th-smallest country, but this tiny island is a rich layer cake of history.

Malta's strategic location, right at the very heart of the Mediterranean, means it's attracted friends and foes.

And it's been fought over by foreign powers for thousands of years.

So, from Stone Age travelers to Crusader knights to British royalty, all kinds of outsiders have left their mark here, meaning this is one of the most remarkable time capsules in the world.

With fabulous access to the island's treasures, I'm exploring what the story of Malta reveals about the world and us.

The Maltese archipelago sits between Africa and Europe, and my first treasure exists thanks to that pivotal location.

It's a 500-year-old wonder of construction, a huge, imposing city fortress, a reminder that crises can spur creativity.

This is one of the most strategic spots in the whole of the island.

Control this vantage point and you control the Grand Harbour, and therefore, you control the island of Malta, and beyond that, hundreds of miles' worth of seaways right across the Mediterranean.

This is Fort St. Angelo, the gateway to Malta.

The lion's share of what you see today was built by the Order Of the Knights of the Hospital Of St. John.

Under their command, this fort witnessed one of the most vicious and game-changing conflicts in history.

The story of the knights starts far from here, in Jerusalem, in the 11th century, when the Christian order was founded to defend the Holy Land and the pilgrims who traveled there.

For 200 years, they were in the Middle East, building a hospital in Jerusalem, and stayed until Muslim forces took over the region and they were kicked out.

They searched for a permanent base.

In 1530, the key power player of the day, the Holy Roman emperor, finally found the knights a new home -- this place.

At that point, a half-ruined castle, this could be an ideal H.Q.

But there were two conditions.

Every year, the knights had to supply the emperor with a single peregrine falcon, and they had to promise to wage incessant war against pirates and infidels.

The falcon was easily enough done.

As for pirates and infidels, that was a bigger ask.

The emperor had in mind the superpower of the day, the Ottoman Turks, steadily expanding their empire, with their eyes on Malta.

The knights had to weaponize their new base, so they expanded outwards, beyond the castle, constructing massive fortifications on the rocks all around.

Once secure, the knights, known as Hospitallers, practiced what they preached.

[ Choir singing ] Because the knights were monks, they were celibate; they took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; and they were obliged to do good works.

So they looked after the poor, the needy, orphans, and abandoned women, treating all patients, including Jews and Muslims, with practices partly inspired by their time in the East.

In May 1565, the knights had to put aside their caring duties, mustering every ounce of their soldiering skills, because the Ottoman Turks were on the attack.

Malta was besieged... and Fort St. Angelo was the heart of the knights' resistance.

On the 19th of May 1565, almost 300 Ottoman ships sailed into this harbor.

The horizon was white with their sails.

And then, as the battle began, eyewitnesses described the sea running red with blood.

It was a struggle between two superpowers for control of the strategic island.

We're told that the Ottomans had over 40,000 men against just 700 knights and 8,000 soldiers.

The defenders of Malta were outnumbered four to one.

What followed was one of the bloodiest and most ferociously contested sieges in history.

Time and time again, the knights used incendiary devices -- basically, dirty, flaming bombs -- that they catapulted out at the enemy Ottoman ships.

At one point, when the Turks had the upper hand, they took four headless bodies of the knights, gashed crosses into their chests, lashed their bodies to crucifixes, and sent them back to Fort St. Angelo as a terrible message.

In retaliation, all of the Turkish prisoners were decapitated, and their heads were used as cannonballs.

We're told that even the Maltese women and children got involved, pouring flaming oil from the ramparts.

There was desperation and horror and suffering on both sides, Ottoman Turks and knights alike.

After four months, Fort St. Angelo still stood firm.

The Ottoman Turks retreated.

They'd lost 30,000 men; Malta, one third of its population.

But from the flames of destruction, something wonderful arose.

Surviving the crisis of the Ottoman attack, the knights were galvanized to build a splendid new city -- Valletta.

Valletta, named after the leader of the order, Jean Parisot de la Valette, was a bold, new dream metropolis.

And with its giant secure walls, the whole city became a fortress, a kind of child of Fort St. Angelo, keeping the Maltese and its knights safe.

After the horrors of the siege, the Maltese resolved never to be vulnerable again.

So they constructed a secret subterranean world under the streets.

And I've been tipped off there is access down there, somewhere a bit special.

Hi.

-Hello.

-Sorry to disturb you.

I actually need to get down here.

Would you mind sitting at another table?

-Not at all.

-If it's okay.

Thank you.

I'm sorry to disturb you.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Bye.

I just can't believe I've been allowed down here.

The knights and the people of Malta realized that they had a real ally in the form of the rock that the island itself is made of.

So, it's soft enough to carve through, but strong enough to support huge weight.

[ Water splashing ] It's perfect anti-siege engineering.

Now the fortified city could be more self-sufficient.

Down here, there are sophisticated sanitation systems and vaults for storing food and huge systems like this that would keep the population of Malta fed and watered for months.

This subterranean innovation helped keep the Maltese people safe from disease and starvation for centuries, fired by the suffering of the Great Siege of Malta, centered on Fort St. Angelo.

Fort St. Angelo is a wonder for me because it reminds us that necessity really is the mother of invention and that we should understand history from all vantage points.

Through the story of the world, islands have been engines of civilization, stopping-off points for travelers, where people meet, where goods and ideas are exchanged.

So my next wonder is the underwater treasure trove that surrounds Malta.

Hundreds of finds, with new discoveries every season -- many rewriting the story of history.

Hi.

Timmy?

-Hi.

-Hi.

Thank you.

-Welcome on board.

-Thank you so much.

Great to be here.

-Shall we head out?

-Let's go.

Timmy Gambin is a professor of archaeology at the University of Malta.

He's hunted these waters for clues to the human story for over 20 years.

And he's taking me to one of his latest finds.

Malta's oldest wreck, dating back 2,700 years.

It's incredibly rare -- a relic of the Phoenicians, Bronze Age super sailors who linked up cultures across this sea, the Mediterranean, as they traveled and traded.

He's fishing, is he, yeah?

-[ Speaking Maltese ] -[ Speaking Maltese ] -He's fishing for octopus in the traditional way, with traps.

-Aha.

-You saw his dog?

-Yeah.

-With his crew?

-Yes.

[ Laughing ] Look at that dog.

[ Dog barking ] So, I think we're just kind of locating exactly where -- so, we're trying to get right above the wreck here?

-Yes.

[ Speaking Maltese ] -[ Speaking Maltese ] -Yeah, so, we're on it.

-Are we?

-Yes.

More or less.

At 110 meters down, this is one of the deepest wrecks in the world under excavation.

It's a whole boat, is it?

-It's a whole boat, minus the boat, because the wood has disappeared, eaten by the teredos, by the shipworm, over the millennia.

-Uh-huh.

-But what's left is the cargo, which, indeed, is still in the shape of a boat.

And I can actually show you what the site looks like.

-Hey, look!

Amazing!

-See?

-I mean, this is unbelievably brilliant.

-So, you can see the amphorae with the handle here.

-Yes.

-They're actually stowed in their original position -- look, one, two, three.

These are the clay jars in which wine, olive oil, and possibly other consumables, such as honey... -Ah.

-...would have been transported across the Mediterranean.

-How many amphorae in total?

-There are over 100 visible.

But we know that there are many more buried in the sediments.

So, this is a time where we often don't have much archaeological evidence, so it's a real kind of mysterious time in the story of mankind.

But this is where it was all happening then.

-It's the center of a trading network that existed in this part of the Mediterranean.

-The Phoenicians, great influencers, originally from the Middle East, moved goods and innovations between continents, from the world's first written alphabet to cargo like this.

-When we recover objects from underwater sites, sometimes we're the first people to touch these objects in 2,000 years.

So, there's the physical connection.

But one can't help but think of the potter that made the jars, the people that crushed the olives, you know.

So there's always this human element present in our work.

-Mm.

So, they have been lost, but they aren't lost without trace.

-Definitely not.

-Glimpsing the amphorae on the seabed was extraordinary, but I want to see the real thing.

So the next day, Timmy calls me in.

Timmy, hi, hi.

How you doing?

-Hi.

Good to see you again.

-Lovely to see you.

-Isn't she a beauty?

-She's totally beautiful, 2,700 years old.

And have you analyzed this?

Do you know what it was carrying inside?

-In this particular case, we're leaning towards it transporting wine, because the inside of the amphora is lined with pitch.

-The ancients did not like their wine tainted by the taste of the terra-cotta pot, did they?

-Absolutely not.

But it's not wine as we know it today.

It is concentrated.

This concentrate would go into some form of mixing bowl, add water, and then consumed.

-Ah.

-And do you know where it originated?

-I'm convinced that this is a locally made pot with locally made wine.

This was a ship that was leaving the Maltese Islands, on its way to trade elsewhere.

-Ah.

I mean, it's tragic in some ways, isn't it?

Because it didn't get very far from the coast.

-It's tragic because somebody lost a fortune.

I'm absolutely certain that, you know, people lost their lives, as well.

But 2,700 years later, we're presented with, you know, this treasure of information -- treasure that sheds light on a Mediterranean story that is yet to be told.

-Absolutely.

There are treasures here lost by ancient Greeks, Romans, Arabs, proving Malta is a hinge between Europe and Africa -- a tiny place that expanded civilization, showing us that islands help power culture and that Mediterranean islands are the children of both East and West.

My next wonder is a story of exile and achievement... because, five centuries ago, a notorious artist on the run fled here and produced a work that would mark a turning point in the history of art.

Caravaggio was an Italian painter who was born in Milan in the 16th century.

He was really a wild genius who created incredible works.

He used real people as models, even for biblical figures, ushering in a naturalistic style, kick-starting modern painting.

But for me, this particular painting is a real wonder of Malta.

And the story of how it came to be created here on this island is one packed with intrigue, corruption, and murder.

This, Caravaggio's masterpiece, is particularly amazing when you know its backstory.

There was a dark side to Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

He'd wounded a police officer, and he picked one drunken brawl after another.

He was tortured and talented and dangerous.

In his motherland, Italy, he killed a well-connected Roman in a duel.

With a price on his head, he fled south to Malta.

The knights immediately latched on to this celebrity and admitted Caravaggio as a novice to the Order Of St. John.

From brawler to murderer to Christian knight, it was quite the transformation.

[ Bells toll ] Caravaggio was now apparently on the side of the angels, and the knights capitalized on his presence.

In 1608, they commissioned him to paint a grand altarpiece for this, their magnificent new cathedral.

[ Choir singing ] Ah, this is absolutely incredible.

Oh.

A showcase for their Christian order.

This was a fulcrum of the knights' influence, and trendy, turbulent, talk-of-the-town Caravaggio was asked to paint a statement piece, which is still here.

At the time, Caravaggio was still on the run, still wanted for murder, so it's extraordinary he should be asked to make a painting for this holy place.

I'm about to see it in the flesh for the first time.

That is completely remarkable... because you walk in, it doesn't look as though you're looking at a painting.

It feels as though you come in and there's an open window, and you're seeing something through it that you really shouldn't be witnessing.

In a prison yard, an executioner is using a knife to decapitate St. John the Baptist.

A servant girl waits for the severed head with a golden platter.

Other prisoners watch in horror from a window.

They could be next.

Knowing Caravaggio's life story and his state of mind helps you read this painting in a different way.

This doesn't just feel like an illustration of a Bible story.

It feels very personal, it feels really intimate.

It's almost like photojournalism.

Caravaggio would have seen men beheaded in the world around him, and you wonder if this painting is talking about that or whether he's actually prefiguring his own fate.

This is the only painting that Caravaggio signed, and where he chose to put his signature was in the blood that's pooling out of John the Baptist's neck.

That has to say something about his mental state, about how dark and desperate he felt while he was here.

Shortly after completing this masterpiece, the fugitive was in trouble yet again.

Another brawl, and this time, a high-ranking knight was severely wounded.

Caravaggio's crime was really serious, so he was brought here to Fort St. Angelo for his incarceration.

And believe it or not, the prison is still here.

[ Metal clanking ] [ Laughs, grunts ] [ Breathing heavily ] Okay.

I'm delighted I've got access, but I hate small, dark spaces, so I'm slightly anxious about this.

Okay.

[ Ladder rattling ] [ Sighing ] Oh.

Oh, this is horrible.

Hey, look at these.

Caravaggio, being Caravaggio, had absolutely no intention of being kept locked up down here, and somehow -- I mean, we don't know how -- after a few weeks, he managed to escape.

I mean, there's no way you could get out of here by yourself, so he must've bribed or maybe blackmailed somebody.

What a stunt.

Caravaggio vanished from his rock-cut cell... and from the island of Malta.

Even though Caravaggio wasn't here, the knights put on a kind of show trial.

They laid his robes to symbolize the man in front of this painting, and they found him guilty.

If Caravaggio had been here in person, he'd have been beheaded.

As it was, they stripped him of his promised knighthood.

Within two years, he was found dead in mysterious circumstances -- quite possibly the knights' last revenge.

Caravaggio's painting somehow fits with the wonderful, complicated nature of this place -- an island that's rarely at peace but that also boasts a wild, dangerous beauty.

That's why, for me, this maverick outsider's painting is a bittersweet treasure of Malta, a wonder created from the intense isolation of exile.

From 1813 to 1964, Malta was a British colony.

Our next treasure is a rather surprising relic of that age.

This is a hidden wonder with a connection to the British royal family.

The young Princess Elizabeth lived here, with her new husband, Philip, a commander in the British Navy, between 1949 and 1951.

What an amazing place to get access to.

Yet to take the crown from her father, King George VI, she could enjoy an island paradise.

Today it's in disrepair, barely used since the royal couple left.

It's hauntingly romantic.

This really does feel like a place trapped in time.

Empty for years, these rooms seem thick with secrets and stories.

So, why Malta?

Once they were married, Philip begged George VI to allow him to return to active service, rather than his desk job at the Admiralty, "shuffling ships around all day," as Philip put it.

The king agreed, but on the condition that Elizabeth didn't abandon him, but would return from Malta to Britain from time to time.

At the center of the Mediterranean, Malta was an ideal base for the Royal Navy's fleet, a command point for British interests.

Philip was stationed here, and Elizabeth joined him in time for their second wedding anniversary.

While Philip was on active service, Elizabeth could revel in their new island home.

Oh, I love the color of this room.

There's just something here I want to show you.

[ Chuckles ] So, this is all abandoned old sheet music.

Isn't it lovely, imagining her here, enjoying an evening's music with friends?

The house was lent to them by Philip's uncle Lord Mountbatten.

There are six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a grand hall, and servants' quarters, with separate apartments for Philip and the princess.

This is a -- This is a corner where I feel a bit like I'm poking around a little bit too much.

So, this was the princess' private bathroom.

And her bedroom, with a fireplace -- very unusual in Malta at the time.

It's said that she loved this house precisely because it's that - a house, not a palace.

A home, offering a rare chance to live as a private person rather than a princess.

[ Carillon plays ] An opportunity to experience a taste of ordinary life.

Well, relatively ordinary.

These are the servants' stairs.

And she kept pretty well-staffed.

So, she had a footman and a lady-in-waiting and a detective and 40 wardrobes of clothes.

But it wasn't all glamour and privilege.

She did perform some royal duties while she was here -- touring military installations and cutting ceremonial ribbons and visiting nursery schools -- but she also got to be just an ordinary woman, a lot of her days.

She would have lunch with officers' wives and sunbathe and get her hair done in beauty salons.

And we're told that, sometimes, she even handled her own money.

One of the duke's great friends and an equerry said she only spent 10% of her time here being a princess.

Less time as a princess seemed to suit Elizabeth.

Leaving for a trip to London in 1949, she was visibly upset.

Lady Mountbatten, who was traveling with her, said that as she left, she had a tear in her eye and a lump in her throat, and it was like putting a bird back into a very small cage.

In Britain, Elizabeth discovered she was pregnant with her second child.

Princess Anne was born in August 1950.

As soon as possible, the couple were back in Malta.

The place had become a haven, and this time, they stayed even longer.

But this private paradise existence couldn't last forever.

After just a few months, duty called the princess back to Britain -- this time, for good.

Her father's health was failing, and Elizabeth had to fill in for the king more and more.

So, sadly, in 1951, she had to say a final farewell to this house that she so loved.

It's an extraordinary house with an extraordinary past -- a wonder because it encapsulates what an island can offer -- sanctuary and opportunity.

For Philip, a springboard to the world; and for Elizabeth, a place of refuge where she could be who she wanted to be.

My next treasure helped change the course of history.

Despite this rather unpromising entrance, there's somewhere down here that shaped all of our lives.

A network of tunnels whose nerve center was the Lascaris War Rooms.

These are the hidden headquarters for a secret mission in World War II that would prove to be a major turning point in the battle for Nazi-occupied Europe.

Because the Germans knew that Malta was a prize they wanted to take.

A small, but crucial Allied foothold in the Mediterranean.

So the Nazis decided to attack.

[ Airplanes roaring overhead ] The Italian Fascists, their new allies, began to bomb Malta just 24 hours after they joined the war.

[ Explosion ] What had been an island sanctuary had become a trap.

From 1940 to 1942, 15,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Malta... and Paradise had become a living hell.

Malta fast became the most bombed place on Earth.

-This is just another raid -- no less terrible and no more terrible than over 1,000 others.

-Once more, the Rock of Malta would provide a salvation.

Tunnels built almost 400 years earlier by the Crusader Knights of St. John were expanded to create air raid shelters.

[ Gasps ] Oh, God.

It's really damp, it's really close.

[ Exhales sharply ] The British brought in miners from South Wales and Yorkshire, along with Royal Engineers, to help make these a temporary sanctuary for the Maltese people.

Golly, they just go on.

It just goes on and on, down here.

Once finished, these could house close on the entire population of Malta.

So, you can still see these little, um, remnants of life.

So, there are kind of bottles left on the ground and these little shelves.

Actually, looks like tiles in there.

Is it?

I don't know if they tried to make a little bathroom here, or a kind of kitchen or something.

Oh, look at that.

I don't know if you can see that.

It's a Virgin Mary that somebody's just carved into the rock.

That's so sad.

So, it's like the stone and her spirit that's going to keep them alive down here.

A family lived in each room.

The tunnels became streets.

So, this must be a crossroads.

Ah, okay, that makes sense.

So, I'd heard that they made the street system so it kind of mirrors the city above.

Look, that's got the name on it.

Oh, my God, look at that.

So, St. Lucia's, so this must be -- There's a St. Lucia Street up there.

Oh, there's something so touching about that.

It's almost like this, you know, it's a kind of parallel world they're trying to create down here.

Oh, what -- what suffering... and what bravery to carry on life in this way.

By the time the raids came to an end, in November 1942, the city of Valletta's population had fallen from 21,000 to just 6,000.

The air raids might have stopped, but the war was far from over.

[ Dramatic music plays ] [ Doors creak ] The top-secret area of the underground network, the war rooms, could now come into its own.

By May 1943, the Nazis had been driven out of North Africa.

And for the Allies, the next obvious place to attack was Sicily.

From Sicily, the Allies could exert pressure on Fascist Italy and northward through Europe.

But they knew that the Germans would realize that.

They had somehow to persuade them otherwise.

Sicily was such an obvious target that the Brits attempted all kinds of ingenious plans to divert the Germans' attention elsewhere.

[ Water bubbling ] The most infamous aimed to throw the focus to Sardinia.

A corpse -- a real corpse -- was dressed as a Royal Marine.

And the body was planted with fake papers identifying the man as a William Martin, an officer who'd been lost at sea in a fictitious air crash near Gibraltar.

Chained to the body was a briefcase containing more fake documents, hinting that after Tunisia, the Allies were going to invade Sardinia.

British intelligence rigged it so the body was washed up on a Spanish beach, where it was handed over to the German authorities.

It was a great idea, and it's a great story.

But, sadly, this ruse had little direct effect, other than to raise the alarm... and the stakes.

With the enemy's attention focused on Sicily more than ever, the Allies were under extreme pressure as they planned their invasion.

So they sent troops and officers from Britain, the U.S., and Canada, a massive international effort, all to be commanded from Malta.

The whole thing would be run from this room.

The Allied supreme commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, arrived to direct the operation, and he sat right here.

What followed, as the Allies prepared to take Sicily, was one of the largest amphibious operations ever attempted, with more troops than D-Day.

Operation Husky was launched in July 1943.

It all began just before dawn on the 10th.

Over the next three days, over 3,000 boats transporting 150,000 ground troops, flanked by 4,000 aircraft in the skies, made their way toward Sicily.

They were met by over 260,000 enemy Axis troops.

38 days of brutal, bitter fighting followed.

[ Explosion ] Finally, the Allies won out.

[ Crowd cheers ] Italy's leader, Mussolini, was deposed and arrested.

Hitler lost a key collaborator.

The Allies gained a chance to reclaim Europe.

[ Thud ] From this very room, albeit with close on 25,000 casualties, the Allies had taken their first major step in the liberation of Europe.

These war rooms made history and are to be treasured.

Operations masterminded here saved Malta from further horrors impacting all our life.

And there's a wonderful coda to this story.

[ Indistinct conversations ] Malta's strategic location meant that everyone living here was in jeopardy, but the entire population rose heroically to the challenge.

And in recognition of their continuous bravery, despite repeated aerial attack and besiegement, in 1942, the George Cross was awarded to the whole island, Britain's highest award for civilian bravery.

And that is still emblazoned on the Maltese flag today.

[ Indistinct conversations ] My next treasure is an extraordinary monument to the human spirit -- a boat ride away, on Malta's sister island, Gozo.

Over 7,000 years ago, women and men packed onto flimsy reed boats and ventured out to this island to try to make a new life for themselves.

They came from what's now Sicily and North Africa in search of new opportunities.

They must've been curious or desperate, I mean, certainly, with an incredible spirit of adventure, to brave these waters in a small boat, not knowing what lay ahead of them.

In their new island home, they created something remarkable -- Stone Age wonders, evidence of the power of human collaboration, the bedrock of civilization.

This is Ggantija Temple.

It was built over 5,500 years ago, and it's one of the oldest freestanding structures in the world.

Incredibly, raised a thousand years before Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of ancient Egypt.

The word Ggantija comes from "ggant," the Maltese for "giant."

[ Birds chirping ] There's a local legend that this place was built in a single day and a night by a giantess who -- wait for it -- was nursing a baby at her breast as she worked.

I'm not surprised they tell stories like this, because some of these stones are over 5 meters long and they weigh over 50 tons.

There's no evidence of slavery from this culture.

It seems that, in a collective effort, they rolled the stones here.

And the complex art this island community created together and shared celebrates the natural world, honoring their connection to the earth, the sea, and the sky.

These temples are orientated to the movement of stars, to the rising and setting of the sun, so they must be something to do with the progress of time, with beginnings and ends, with death and regeneration.

Basically, with the stories and mysteries of life itself.

Incredibly, there are 42 more megalithic sites on this tiny archipelago.

My next treasure is one of them.

It's particularly special because it's a mirror image of this temple, but under the ground, and special for me because I've wanted to get access to this hidden wonder beneath the city streets of Malta all my adult life.

I have to say, I am properly hyped about this because this place is truly unique.

There is nothing else quite like it, from this time, anywhere in the world.

It's called Hypogeum -- literally, "the under-earth place."

[ Footsteps approaching ] This was only discovered by accident in 1902, when builders were drilling for a well here.

This is one of the best preserved subterranean Stone Age sites in the world.

Oh, this really is a labyrinth down here.

It's actually making me quite nervous because I know there are at least 34 different chambers to get lost in.

And its sophisticated shapes should look familiar.

This is a kind of underworld version of the temples above.

So, you've got doors and windows and that beautiful corbeled roof has got a supportive beam which, of course, it doesn't need, because it's underground here.

But it's engineering that's being used to prove that this is a kind of twin of what lies above the earth.

This was clearly built by the same people as the Ggantija Temple aboveground, but the Hypogeum is even more impressive.

Three stories deep, reaching 10 meters into the earth.

It would've been the most massive effort to hack all this out of the raw rock.

I don't know if you can see there -- these are the marks left by the tools that they used.

They were kind of prehistoric pickax made of horn or antler.

And what you've got to think is that this was a time when life was really, really hard.

So you didn't know if there was going to be a disease or animal attack or crop failure, so death was always just around the corner.

So, to take time out to make this tells me that what happened down here really, really mattered to the people of the island.

Because this is where those Stone Age islanders tried to make sense of the world and their place in it.

This place is magical for so many reasons, but this surely has to be one of the stars.

This beautiful figurine was found down here.

This is a copy of the original, because the original was made over 4,500 years ago.

Now, we don't know who she is.

We don't know whether she's a goddess or a priestess or just an ordinary woman, or, because she's lying in this perfect, peaceful sleep, whether what she represents is death.

Now, she was found in that pit down there, mixed up with a huge number of human bones, because what this place was used for was a giant burial ground.

As many as 7,000 people were buried here over time -- women, men, and children, all in the same place.

There are these incredible red symbols everywhere.

They're on the ceilings and the walls, and they're very faded now.

It's so frustrating because we don't know what they mean, but the people here also covered the bones with red ocher, so this must be something to do with blood.

It must be something to do with life and death.

And I think they must have understood the magic of the cycle of life, that we're all part of a bigger matrix, that material never really disappears, it just takes a new form.

Although most of the bone evidence has disintegrated, I'm incredibly fortunate to have access to one of the few intact skulls excavated from the Hypogeum, belonging to a 25-year-old male.

It is in amazing state of preservation.

I have to say, it is such a privilege to be face-to-face with someone from this remarkable prehistoric world and to just imagine what those eyes saw.

This was an individual, a young man, who chose to work together with those around him to pioneer new ideas and who chose to be buried with them, too.

The fact that they chose mass burials surely says that togetherness hugely mattered to them, perhaps above all else.

For me, these Stone Age treasures are all beyond wonderful, because they're a product of women and men collaborating, forming a society, the beginning of civilization itself.

So much has happened on this small island across the last 8,000 years.

From the wildness of prehistoric temples to secret operations in World War II, from macho Crusader knights to the delights of island life, this has been a place of salvation and of siege.

But it's also important because it's a reminder that no man or woman is an island, that we're all the products of interaction and shared inspirations and pleasures and pains.

And that, for me, is why Malta is a wonder -- because it's a microcosm of the world and of the human experience.