The Reward Trap: How ancient Malta engineered the mind for higher learning and creativity.

The Descent

In 2015, I travelled to Malta on a research trip, chasing a question that had been following me for years: What did truly advanced human societies reward?

One afternoon, I stood before a narrow staircase carved deep into limestone. It was the entrance to the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, a structure over 5,000 years old. The air inside was cool and still, carrying the faint scent of stone and time. As I stepped downward, the light dimmed until we moved in soft shadow.

Collage art by Louise Sommer Harvey inspired by Malta.

It was a mind-expanding experience every single time I visited this extraordinary UNESCO site. (A huge shout-out to Malta for taking such excellent care of their world heritage.) The space seemed to respond to human presence. It was calm, quiet, still and yet, so full of a human legacy we should be celebrating.

Later, I learned why: archaeologists and sound researchers have confirmed that parts of the Hypogeum resonate at around 110 Hz, a frequency now known to stimulate the prefrontal cortex; the part of the brain responsible for higher-order thinking, emotional regulation, and creative insight. This makes it truly remarkable that an entire underground structure was built specifically to strengthen and develop this area of the brain! Just think about that for minute!

This was no tomb. The Hypogeum wasn’t built for burial or fear of the afterlife. It was a purpose-built environment for the mind. Here, sound, story, and human gathering were amplified into something greater. A technology of connection.

A Society Built on Higher Learning

Imagine a society where the greatest structure you could enter wasn’t a palace, fortress, or temple of worship, but a machine for higher learning and belonging.

Archaeologists now believe the Hypogeum was part of a network of cultural spaces connected to Malta’s megalithic temples. These weren’t just places to shelter from the weather or hold ceremonies. Even though we may never fully understand every aspect of these ancient temples and their way of life, we know they were also spaces of seasonal gathering. Moments, in the year, when people came together to share knowledge, make collective decisions, pass on oral history, and reaffirm social bonds.

It was a space where the past (through cultural memory and what we now call epigenetics) and the future could merge.

The rhythm was set by the land and the seasons, not by markets or political agendas. Crops were planted and harvested; seas were calm or stormy; and with each cycle came the stories, songs, lived experiences, and discussions that shaped the identity of the people.

Here, the reward for participation wasn’t profit or personal glory. It was connection, contribution, and being part of something enduring.

The original reward system

Modern neuroscience tells us that the brain is deeply shaped by what it’s rewarded for. I learned much about this in my recent neuroscience coach training. The neurotransmitter dopamine reinforces behaviours by creating a feeling of satisfaction and motivation. But what we choose to reward, individually or collectively, determines the kind of people, and the kind of society, we become.

In the Hypogeum culture, the “status symbols” were not wealth or conquest. They were wisdom, higher intelligence, storytelling skill, the ability to hold the group’s attention, and insight that helped the community thrive.

By gathering in a space intentionally designed to influence brain activity, amplifying voices and synchronising heartbeat and breath through rhythmic resonance, these temple cultures were doing more than transmitting knowledge. They were deliberately reinforcing neurological patterns associated with sustained focus, advanced empathy, and long-term, strategic thinking.

What would these societies and cultures have been like? What could they teach us today if they could?

If you repeatedly activate the prefrontal cortex in emotionally rich, socially connected contexts, you strengthen the neural pathways for emotional regulation, foresight, and creative problem-solving. In other words: 5000 years ago, they were actively engineering brains for collective creative intelligence. Now, that is pretty advanced to me!

The Great Shift: From cooperation to control

Somewhere in human history, the reward system shifted.

Many ancient cultures built social structures around cooperation and shared intelligence because it was the key to survival. But as centralised power emerged and kingdoms, empires, and later industrial states, reward systems changed.

Loyalty to the group was replaced by loyalty to the ruler. Success became about personal accumulation rather than collective well-being. Storytelling turned into propaganda; learning became a means to serve power, not expand minds.

The colonisation of the mind that aimed to control the stories a people tell about themselves, became as important as controlling their land. And once the reward system shifted, the brain adapted. We became skilled at pleasing authority out of fear and survival, chasing short-term wins, and competing for resources rather than cooperating to build something enduring.

Today’s reward traps

We modern humans like to think of ourselves as more advanced than the people who carved the Hypogeum out of limestone with stone tools. In some ways we are: we can send satellites into space, sequence genomes, and build machines that learn.

But our modern reward systems? They’re primitive compared to Malta’s.

Today we are rewarded for:

• Attention capture rather than attention depth. (Social media “likes” instead of meaningful dialogue.)

• Short-term profit rather than long-term resilience. (Quarterly earnings over generational stability.)

• Winning arguments rather than solving problems. (Political point-scoring over collaborative governance.)

Our nervous systems are constantly hit with fast, shallow dopamine triggers: the email ping, the notification, the news headline designed to provoke outrage. This rewards reactivity, not reflection. It trains the brain for impulsive thinking, not higher-order reasoning.

The consequence? A narrowing of our cognitive and emotional range. Over time, rewards for reactivity make it harder to pause, empathise, or think long-term. We become strangers to the very mental states that once shaped advanced human cultures.

We can build an AI that writes poetry, but not a political system that nurtures collective empathy. (Have you ever thought about that?)

Meet OTSF - The OTS Foundation for neolithic studies ( archaeoacoustic research.)

The cost of the wrong rewards

When reward systems encourage speed over depth, individualism over cooperation, and spectacle over substance, the result is emotional under-development at scale.

We see:

• Polarisation: inability to hold space for differing perspectives and differences..

• Mistrust: erosion of the social glue that holds communities together.

• Problem myopia: inability to address long-term issues because the rewards are all in the short-term.

  
  

We have, in effect, engineered ourselves away from the very capacities the Hypogeum culture deliberately cultivated.

Where this could take us again

But here’s the good news: the brain is plastic. Just as it can be trained for impulsive reactivity, it can be trained for patience, empathy, and vision.

If we designed our reward systems to value learning, connection, and mental expansion again, what could we create?

We could have:

• Technology designed to enhance collective problem-solving, not just capture attention.

• Social systems where cooperation is a currency as valuable as money.

• Knowledge networks that preserve cultural memory while advancing innovation.

• Education that balances factual learning with emotional and relational intelligence.

These are not utopian dreams. We have historical proof they’ve been done, and done well.

A blueprint from the past

The Hypogeum culture offers a template:

• Rhythmic gatherings tied to the natural cycles that shape human life.

• Shared storytelling as a vehicle for emotional bonding and information transfer.

• Physical spaces that promote mental states of openness, focus, and belonging.

• Reward structures that elevate those who contribute to the group’s long-term health.

Imagine if our modern equivalents such as schools, workplaces, and public forums, were designed with the same principles. Imagine walking into a meeting room or classroom built to optimise calm focus, higher thinking and creative intelligence rather than productivity at all costs. What would that be like?

Closing: The advanced Civilisation Test

If a truly advanced civilisation looked at us today, what would they see? Probably not the cleverness of our gadgets, but the immaturity of our reward systems. They would see a species with extraordinary potential, still training itself for the wrong things.

We have the knowledge now, in neuroscience, in history, in psychology, to shift the pattern. To reward what makes us deeply human: empathy, curiosity, and the ability to think beyond ourselves.

The Hypogeum whispers across millennia: Build for the mind you want to have, not just the world you want to control.

Continue the journey in my next blog, The Empathy Gap: What Ancient Ports Can Teach Us About Understanding Across Difference, where I explore how historical trading cities like Alexandria and Carthage cultivated empathy, and what neuroscience tells us about rebuilding it today.

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Louise Sommer is an Educational Psychologist, artist, and creative learning consultant with a certified background in neuroscience-based coaching. With over 15 years of international experience, she works at the intersection of adult education, emotional intelligence, and cultural storytelling. Louise helps institutions, professionals, and purpose-driven educators transform complex knowledge into meaningful, human-centred communication.

She offers 1:1 mentoring and communication coaching for educators and scholars, and designs tailored workshops for teaching teams and learning environments.