With a of about 542,000 over an of 316 km2 (122 sq mi), Malta is the world's -smallest country by area and the ninth-most populated. Various consider the country to consist of a single urban , for which it is often as a city-state. Malta has been since at least 6500 BC, during the Mesolithic. Its in the centre of the Mediterranean has given it great geostrategic , with a succession of having ruled the islands and shaped its and society. These the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans antiquity; the Arabs, Normans, and Aragonese the Middle Ages; and the Knights Hospitaller, French, and British in the era.