Clapham Junction in the rock, and nobody agrees who cut it
On bare limestone near the Dingli Cliffs in the south of Malta, parallel grooves up to 60 centimetres deep run across the rock 110 to 140 centimetres apart, crossing and branching so thickly that the archaeologist David Trump named the place Clapham Junction, after the London railway station. Nobody agrees who cut them, when, or how. Estimates run from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages; they can hardly be later than about 700 BC, and several examples point to the Temple Period of around 3800 to 2500 BC. Ruts like these run all over Malta and Gozo, and at St George’s Bay in Birżebbuġa they go straight into the sea and continue underwater, which has fed speculation that they were cut in the last Ice Age when the sea stood lower. A study in 2008 offered the plainest answer: wooden-wheeled carts on limestone that loses about 80 percent of its strength when wet, wearing through the soil first and then into the bedrock, each cart making it easier for the next to follow the same track.
Siġġiewi, near the Dingli Cliffs, Malta
See it on the map
Other places on the map within a couple of hours of here.
