I have quite often complained in this column about how Maltese men are, erm, vertically challenged. Today, I just want to say that I will complain no more. And the reason is that I now know for a fact that we’ve come a long, long way.

Thousands of years ago, our great ancestors were all Danny DeVitos. The average height back in 3,000 BC was all of 1.5 metres. Which placed us right next to hobbits and gremxul in the world’s scale of things.

The good news is that after 5,000 years the average height has today gone up by 20cm. If my Maths is correct, that works out to be four millimetres every 100 years.

How do I know all this? Because I was playing tourist in Gozo last week and at the new Ġgantija temples’ brilliant new visitor centre, they had a height chart for Stone Age people, based on the skeletons found at Xagħra Circle prehistoric cemetery.

My eight-year old daughter is 145cm. If she had to time-travel, prehistorics would think she’s a giant child. Which means I have high hopes for future generations: by AD5,000 the average Maltese should be a six-footer.

My hypothesis for our lack of height in bygone eras was simple: we were short because of stress. Imagine living a life where you had to be constantly squinting the shores for sight of an enemy; where water was in short supply; where there was no concept of holiday; where every day you had to push gigantic stones around because someone came up with the idea of building a fancy temple; where your teeth fell off and you couldn’t have a denture and was condemned to eat mashed bajtar all your life and talked with your cheeks sucked in and whatever you said sounded like variations of ‘foshifoshi’. That is stress. And stress stunts evolution.

I hear your snide snort. Surely, you’re saying, that doesn’t count anymore: we have been labelled the laziest nation in the world. Ah, but we are stressed indeed.

We have to keep up with Facebook, we navigate hours and hours in traffic, we have loans to keep up with. In fact, as I’m making a mental list of all our daily stresses, I am suddenly worried that we might not reach that four-millimetre growth per 100 years.

My hypothesis for our lack of height in bygone eras was simple: we were short because of stress

So, after some reflection on the matter, I have the following recommendations. I think we should holiday more... in Gozo. Why Gozo?

First of all, by holidaying there, we avoid the drab airports with never-ending snaking queues, with security which make you take off your shoes on the very day you’re wearing socks with holes, with flights three hours long and with children constantly moaning “Are we there yet?”

Secondly, when we go to Gozo, we stay in accommodation which would have been tried and tested by friends or at least friends of friends. You know exactly what you’re going to find. There is no chance of turning up at your self-catering apartment and you find it’s a bug-ridden kip which smells of fried chips.

Also the island is full of sleepy villages, where you can still find women clustered in the shade of alleyways making lace with ċombini; where men still spend whole afternoons playing boċċi; where unless you’re staying at Rabat, the chances are you’ll be woken up by crickets and church bells.

It is the place where a restaurant won’t open on the busy festa weekend because the waiters are from the village and they want to join the revelling. It is still the place where everyone turns up for the village feast, wearing frilly clothes. It is where you will always find an old man resting on a brick in the corner of a junction to give you the right directions before you’ve even asked for them. And where people speak Maltese but you don’t understand a word because the accent’s so odd that you just nod.

Yes, of course, there is a rub: it is expensive; service in most restaurants is slow and in Gozo you go to buy two portions of fries from a beach shack and they tell you “U iva, tini 10 euro” (It’s okay, you can give me 10 euro), as if they are doing you a favour.

But more than anywhere else in the world, because everything is so familiar, then it is the perfect place to enjoy the picturesque beaches and to sit and stare at the perfect, floaty, white clouds.

I know no greater pleasure than a ħobża biż-żejt and a shandy on a Gozo beach. I feel fresh and once again ready to face the winter. It is a place where you can lose count of the days of the week. And that is the perfect way to beat stress. Which is perfect because if we’re unstressed, evolution can then take its course. And we definitely don’t want to stand in the way of that, do we?

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti