We know this because archaeologist Eleanor Scerri at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany, and her colleagues excavated a sinkhole in northern Malta, from 2021 to 2023. They found traces of humans: ash from hearths, stone tools and butchered deer bones. Carbon dating showed that people were living there 8500 years ago, the team reported in Nature in April 2025.