before 3000 BCE
From Ice Age cave painters to the first farmers and monument builders.
Australia · at least 6,600 years old
Gunditjmara channels, weirs and dams built to trap and farm eels in lava-flow wetlands.
Türkiye · c. 9500 BCE
Carved T-shaped pillars raised before farming, pottery or writing — and before Stonehenge by about 6,000 years.
France · c. 17,000 years ago
Some of the finest Palaeolithic cave art ever found — seen today through a full-scale replica.
Pakistan · c. 7000–2500 BCE
A Neolithic village where people grew barley and herded cattle thousands of years before the Indus cities.
United Kingdom · c. 3180–2500 BCE
Stone beds, dressers and hearths in Neolithic houses revealed by a storm in 1850.
United Kingdom · c. 3000–1500 BCE
Built and rebuilt over many centuries, with stones hauled from as far away as Wales.
Türkiye · c. 7100–5700 BCE
Thousands of people lived in tightly packed mud-brick houses entered through holes in the roof.