Revealed...the face of a Maltese woman 5,600 years ago

Malta's megalithic temples are slowly revealing secrets about a population that was clever, artistic, creative and talented with an eye for detail and a taste for the delicate and the exotic.

Heritage Malta this evening surprised guests at the Malta Fashion Week with an exhibition entitled Jewellery through the times showing that Malta's first residents were not the aggressive, dirty individuals with unkempt hair which most imagine them to have been.

The exhibition was followed by a fashion show of replica prehistoric jewellery, which preceded the main highlight: changing the misconception related to the image of prehistoric people by means of a unique reconstruction.

The items featured in the fashion show were replicas of objects worn by individuals who lived on the Maltese islands some 5600 years ago. The artefacts exhibited were discovered at various Prehistoric Temple sites and form part of the permanent display at Heritage Malta’s National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta.

Heritage Malta also launched a 3D virtual reconstruction of facial features based on one of the prehistoric skulls (over 5,000 years old) found at the Xagħra Stone Circle in Gozo. It revealed, for the very first time, what one of the earliest Maltese actually looked like.

It was a face which was much closer to what one would expect from a woman of our day and age rather than that of a person who lived on the islands over 5,000 years ago. timesofmalta.com/

Related: Jewellery Through The Times

Actualización 09-05-13. Reconstruyen rostro de mujer de Malta de hace 5.000 años
Expertos de la U. de Dundee (Gran Bretaña) reconstruyeron el rostro de una mujer de hace 5.000 años usando su cráneo, el que aún se conserva en el Museo Nacional de Arqueología de Malta.

La reconstrucción virtual en 3D se basó en un cráneo prehistórico encontrado en el llamado Círculo de Piedra, en la isla de Gozo de ese país. La reconstrucción forma parte de la Semana de la Moda de Malta y el trabajo reveló que el rostro es mucho más cercano de lo que se esperaría de una mujer que vivió en el Neolítico. La Tercera