Archaeology of Malta - Ghar Dalam
 Literally translated as the 'Cave of Darkness', Ghar Dalam was instrumental in throwing considerable light on the Pleistocene and early Prehistoric period of the Islands. The origins of Ghar Dalam was an underground solution tunnel that was breached into in the late pleistocene by a river flowing along the path of the present day Wied Dalam. Many of the river deposits entered onto the floor of the cave, leaving us one of the most complete stratigraphies of pleistocene deposits in Malta. After the Pleistocene, Ghar Dalam was in the form we know it today. At the end of the sixth millennium BC, man arrived on the islands and made Ghar Dalam one of his first dwelling places. The cave was also used throughout the Temple Period and probably also during the Classical period. Ghar Dalam Cave is a highly important site as it was here that the earliest evidence of human settlement on Malta, some 7,400 years ago, was discovered. What makes the site even more fascinating is that during World War II it served as an air raid shelter and later as a fuel storage depot. The display area consists of two parts: the cave and the museum, which exhibits a remarkable wealth of finds from animal bones to human artefacts. The cave is some 144 metres deep, but only the first fifty metres are open to visitors. The history of the cave and of the Islands can be decoded from Ghar Dalam's stratigraphy. The lowermost layers, more than 500,000 years old, contained the fossil bones of dwarf elephants, hippopotami, micro-mammals and birds. Above the pebble layer is the so-called `deer' layer, dated to around 18,000 years ago. The top layer, or `cultural layer', dates to less than 10,000 years and holds evidence of the first humans on the Island. The museum was opened to the public in the early 1930s and is a piece of history in its own right. A didactic display opened to the public in 2002 covers various aspects of the cave's formation and charts the animal and human finds. It also provides information on the forms of fossil fauna that were present on the Maltese Islands during the Ice Age.
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