The history of the Maltese Islands reads like ‘who’s who’ of military and economic powers holding sway over the Mediterranean through the ages. Going back thousands of years, beyond recorded history, one finds the arrival of early civilizations who came to these islands and settled here in prehistoric times. Successive waves of conquerers took possession of these small but strategically important territories over the centuries, only to pass them on to the next set of ‘owners’.

This timeline starts at around 5200 B.C., when the first waves of stoneage farmers came to these shores, and tracks the main milestones and transitions in Malta’s eventful history, right down to the present.