October 7, 2026, 3:03 pm | Read time: 3 minutes
In the middle of the Mediterranean lies the small country of Malta, today surrounded by the sea and about 90 kilometers from the Italian island of Sicily. However, thousands of years ago, the region looked quite different. During the last ice age, sea levels were significantly lower than they are today, leaving large areas of what is now the seabed dry.
As a result, landmasses existed between Malta and Sicily, which at least temporarily provided possible transition routes between the present-day islands. According to research by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, parts of these former landmasses now lie 119 to 131 meters below the water’s surface. The reason for this lies in the massive ice sheets of the last ice age. Large amounts of water were then bound in the glaciers of the Northern Hemisphere. According to a study by “Earth Surface Processes and Landforms,” the sea level was about 120 to 130 meters lower than it is today. Areas that are now deep under the Mediterranean were still part of the landscape at that time.
What can still be seen underwater today
It has long been known that a completely different landscape once surrounded Malta. Earlier investigations have detected old river valleys, coastal platforms, karstified limestone surfaces, and depressions underwater. The submerged landscape appears to have been much more complex than a simple, flat area between two islands. Reconstructions by the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics show elongated and partially interrupted ridges, as well as depressions and areas where lagoons may have existed. According to researchers, some of these structures resemble shallow tropical coastal landscapes with natural barriers and protected basins. The elevations extend over dozens of kilometers in some cases.
Such landscapes are particularly interesting to science because their reconstruction can help better understand how people once moved in the Mediterranean region and what routes might have been available to them.
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Could people have traveled from Sicily to Malta?
Whether people actually used the areas accessible at that time to travel between Sicily and Malta has not yet been archaeologically proven. However, Sicily was already settled at that time. It is also certain that Stone Age people in the region used marine resources such as fish and birds. On Malta itself, human traces have so far been documented for the period about 8,500 years ago, reports the Max Planck Institute. By that time, however, the sea level had already risen so much that people had to cross the sea to reach the island.
New research examines the submerged landscape in more detail
New insights are now being provided by the scientific campaign BRIDGES. Researchers from the Italian National Research Council CNR, the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics OGS, and the University of Malta examined the seabed between northeast Malta and southeast Sicily. During an eight-day research trip aboard the research vessel “Gaia Blu,” the team studied the submerged landscape using modern echo sounders and seismic measurement methods. The researchers also took sediment cores from the seabed.
These samples could help more precisely determine when individual areas were still dry and when they were flooded by the rising sea level. However, the investigations have not yet been fully evaluated. The new findings could provide further clues in the future about what the landscape between Malta and Sicily once looked like and what role it might have played for humans and animals.