Fundamentally, agriculture is the fabric
that gave birth and shaped our culture. The seasonal rhythms
that came with agriculture shaped our societies, religions,
art and culture.
The first evidence of domesticated
animals in Malta dates back to circa 5200 B.C. were remains
of domestic animals including goats, horses and pigs were
found together with human remains at the Ghar Dalam Caves.
The Early Neolithic farmers probably had
a relatively simple agriculture, utilizing a system of shifting
agriculture in which land was roughly cleared of vegetation,
cultivated for a few years and then abandoned. Carbonised
seed analysis have confirmed that Early Neolithic man cultivated
barley, wheat, leguminous plants - Lens esculenta (Lentil
of Neolithic Anatolian type), two types of wheat - Triticum
dicoccum (Emmer wheat) and Triticum compactum (Club wheat),
and a hulled variety of barley [Helbaek, 1966].
Early Neolithic man also intentionally
and unintentionally introduced a number of animal species
to the Islands. He brought with him a number of domesticated
animal species including pigs, sheep and goats. He also
domesticated cattle. At Skorba with its Early - Late Neolithic
phases, cattle bones seemed to be more frequent in the deposits
of the earlier phases, though overall the commonest bones
recovered belonged to goats and sheep [Gandert, 1966]. The
reason for the change in animal husbandry is related to
grazing patterns of the various species. Goats and sheep,
unlike cattle, graze very close to the ground thus requiring
poorer grazing grounds. In addition Early Neolithic man
introduced the two rat species (Rattus rattus and rattus
norvegicus), the House Mouse (Mus musculus), the Algerian
Hedgehog (Erinaceus algirus), besides domesticated dogs
and cats [Storch, 1970; Boessneck and Kuver, 1970]. Excavations
at the Xemxija Tombs, dated to the beginning of the Late
Neolithic Period (the Temple Culture period), have revealed
a large number of bones belonging to a variety of domesticated
and wild animal species [Pike, 1971].
The key factor influencing Malta’s
unique biodiversity is its geographical isolation. Proof
of this can be found in the Ghar Dalam Caves (circa 5000
B.C.) where remains of animals such as the elephant, deer
and rhinoceros have been found dating back to the time when
the Maltese islands separated from the continents to form
the present archipelago. Their smaller frames indicate that
the animals had adapted to living in a small area of land.
This resulted in what are now called miniature elephants
(Palaeoloxodon mnaidriensis), deer (Cervus elaphus) and
rhinoceros (Hippopotamus melitensis, Hippopotamus pentlandi),
of which only bones remain.
This must have also influenced the
way the local agro biodiversity evolved over the years,
as is evidenced in a large stone carving of a suckling pig
with a litter of twelve piglets that dates back to circa
3000 B.C, found in one of the prehistoric temples.
