The Mysterious and Ancient 'Cart Ruts' of Malta

Truly one of the great mysteries of ancient times are the remarkable parallel trenches that are cut into rock surfaces on the islands of Malta, and nearby Gozo which are somewhat disparagingly refereed to as "cart ruts". Archaeologists have absolutely no idea what they are and the function which they performed. How they were made, nor how old they are. The general mainstream consensus being that they were created circa 2000 BC by Neolithic farmers who arrived from Sicily. However, there is no proof of this, and the evidence contradicts this theory completely. They could be far, far older.

Maltese mythology tells of a race of giants which lived on the islands before farmers arrived from Sicily in neolithic times. It is also worth noting that the Maltese folk history of these giants and how they were defeated by humans - using human 'ingenuity' - is shared with several other western European cultures. 

It is the same race of ancient 'giants' who were credited with creating not only these impressive and mysterious tracks, but also all of the megalithic structures of Malta and Gozo. In fact, this was commonly accepted until the mid 19th century as the only possible explanation for the scale and distribution of these structures.

The trenches are up to 60cm deep, with the distance between the tracks of 110cm to 140cm apart. At some locations the tracks criss-cross one another to form something akin to a complicated railroad junction. The mainstream theory on their creation is that the wheels of carts carrying heavy goods had worn these groves into the bare rock. However, no scientific testing has been undertaken, using a recreation of this process, in order to determine just how many years of wooden wheeled vehicles travelling along the same course would be needed to wear the rock down to a depth of 60cm. 

Even more mysterious is there is no trace of animals such as horses or oxen having pulled these alleged carts. The rock between the tracks is unworn other than by natural forces as if these carts were pulled along by flying creatures! If that was not enough, they often terminate at the edge of cliffs above the sea.

Therefore, ostensibly speaking, mainstream scientific 'explanation' for how these 'cart ruts' were formed; was that wooden carts hauling hundreds of tons of rock each were pulled by birds, apparently back and forth over the same precise paths for hundreds of years just so the birds could pull the wagons and their loads into the Mediterranean. Yet, this remains the official narrative as absurd as it sounds.

Calling them 'cart ruts' is only to entrench the idea in people's consciousness that this is what they were. They could have been anything other than parallel groves created by the wear of wooden wheels over time, especially considering that some of them take sharp turns at various locations and the width of trenches remain the same. A manoeuvre which solid wheeled carts can not perform unless the axle is pivoted. Something that was not invented for thousands of years after their alleged creation date.

If it came to a bet I would still put my money on giants having created them until the scientists and archaeologists can come up with something more prosaic to explain their creation. They also deserve a title other than 'cart ruts'.

The Unfortunate Mixed Bag of William Comyns Beaumont

Biblical Avebury - British Isrealism on Steroids

Between the First and Second World Wars, William Comyns Beaumont, or simply 'Comyns Beaumont' as he preferred to be known was a highly regarded and well respected journalist writing mainly for the British newspaper the Daily Mail. Both his name and status within British society made him very much a part of the social and intellectual elite. His articles and reports on the arts, political intrigue and social issues eventually elevated him to the level of editor ranking him high among the Fleet Street movers and shakers of the time. 

His social and extended working life reads like a 'who's who?' of the British establishment having begun his career path as the Private Secretary to US German Ambassador to Germany during a period of great change and turmoil. As a young man he was no less than the personal assistant to the legendary publisher, Jesuit-insider and power broker James Gordon Bennett. 

Comyns Beaumont was a brilliant intellectual, well travelled, well read and highly regarded member of the British elite until he made the fateful miscalculation of tearing up ancient history (not always a bad idea) and developing his own theories based on his personal research, and you guessed it, British Isrealism. 

Now while I have to agree that much of his work is so 'out there' and well beyond the pale of even the most fanatical British Isrealism, Comyns Beaumont's, work needs to be considered in isolation. While his notions that Edinburgh in Scotland was the actual site of Jerusalem and that the English city of Bristol was the real Soddom of the bible, his theories on 'Atlantis' being located somewhere in the British Isles does indeed have merit and is worth examining in its own right without the biblical overlay.

Comyns Beaumont, believed (as do I) that Plato’s account of the Atlantis disaster was the Classical world's attempts to report an enormous natural catastrophe beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The disaster was so traumatic to the surviving societies that Comyns Beaumont maintain that the fabric of human society from top to bottom completely changed as a result. Not only was a complex and well developed society wiped out, but the after effects of the trauma skewed everything from religious beliefs to the social order. Resulting in the western psyche developing a 'divine punishment' neurosis which generated complete upheavals in social and spiritual dynamics.  Comyns Beaumont also believed that the survivors of 'Atlantis' became the Atlantic cultures of western Europe.

The reason for the disaster - which gave birth to the Atlantis tales - Comyns Beaumont believed was a comet which impacted the Earth about four thousand years ago and that the Celtic peoples of western Europe and the Scandinavians are a product of the aftermath of the impact. He also took the mythology further and suggested that rather than this Atlentean landmass sinking beneath the waves, sea levels quickly rose – as a result of earthquakes causing tsunamis – which then obliterating vast swaths of land and removing land bridges connecting the British Isles to continental Europe. This then resulted in severe climate changes leading to a drop in temperatures from Ireland to Norway.

Comyns Beaumont outlines this 'Atlantis of the North' theory in remarkable detail and complexity in his book Britain, the Key to World History, which was published over a century ago at the start of his glittering career in mainstream journalism. The book argues the point that Scotland was the centre of what was to become known as Atlantis. If nothing else - was remarkable for its time - is that Comyns Beaumont uses comparative mythology from around the world in order to develop his theory. This was long before Immanuel Velikovsky and Carl Jung.

Unfortunately, his otherwise interesting theory then strays absurdly into the domain of a kind of turbocharged British Isrealism by placing Scotland at the centre of not only Atlantis, but also the Biblical stories by proclaiming that Caledonia was – prior to 584 BC -  "the original domicile of the sons of Adam, who were the Titans or giants of classic fame as well as being the Atlanteans of Plato." 

Much of this association is based around finding Scottish, Irish, English and Scandinavian place names which sound Biblical. Therefore he concludes that the Faroes Islands are in fact the 'Pharaoh Islands' and so on. Unfortunately this undermines, what at its core, is a workable idea. Still, William Comyns Beaumont deserve much credit for much of the data he collected and presented in Britain, the Key to World History.