With reference to Mevrick Spiteri's reply (The Sunday Times, March 27), in my previous letter I was making the point that there is a scientific ground to conclude that there is a strong case for the presence of Palaeolithic Man in Malta before the first Neolithic settlement.

As Mr Spiteri stated, various studies were performed on the Ghar Hasan cave paintings by archaeologists who came to different conclusions on data.

But some highly famous archaeologists concluded that the images identified at Ghar Hasan appertain, by way of style, analogy, graphic design and concept, to a horizon of hunter society and they definitely antedate the first Neolithic Maltese folk.

Regarding the Palaeolithic painting depicting a bull from the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, everyone who is familiar with the subject knows that this painting was erased by 'civilised man' in the 1980s and no further study can be performed on it.

In addition to the Palaeolithic pattern of the Hypogeum bull as characterised by the lack of detail and the materials used (black manganese oxide), the red ochre used at the hypogeum has been found by scientific testing by Russian UNESCO representatives to be identical to the world famous Lascaux Palaeolithic paintings in France.

On the subject of human skeletal remains, the most discussed items in the collection are the two taurodont teeth and another tooth, which were excavated by Despott in 1917-20 from the Cervus layer at Ghar Dalam.

These teeth were repeatedly scientifically dated in 1952 and 1968, and while the Museums Department failed to publish the full results of these tests, the primary source of the tests indicated that these teeth may have been contemporaneous with the excavated deer bones, and thus datable to 18,000 years ago.

Similar dating results were obtained from two teeth excavated from the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum in 1952. In view of the suggested possible cultural admixture of skeletal remains in Maltese cave burial sites, it is suggested that some of the excavated material from these sites "could possibly belong to Palaeolithic man".

In particular, one must consider the skulls, which according to anthropologists and anatomists could have primitive features.

Finally, one may well question whether there was further cave art evidence of Palaeolithic man in Malta, which today has disappeared through the erosive effects of time.

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