Karahan Tepe
Şanlıurfa, Turkey
Karahan Tepe is a Stone Age site of rock-cut halls and T-shaped pillars in the Tek Tek Mountains east of Sanliurfa,…
No online ticket
Worldwide
Oldest ancient sites in the world
Dates here are founding dates, and at the top of the list they mean the earliest excavated layer, not the stones you see standing. Karahan Tepe and Göbekli Tepe in south-eastern Turkey, with their carved T-shaped pillars of around 10,000 to 9,500 BC, lead the list with Tell es-Sultan, the mound of Ancient Jericho. Çatalhöyük and Khirokitia in Cyprus follow as Neolithic villages of the eighth millennium BC.
Gobekli Tepe
Şanlıurfa, Turkey
Gobekli Tepe is a Stone Age hilltop site near Sanliurfa in south-eastern Turkey, where people raised rings of carved…
8 tickets & tours
Tell es-Sultan (Ancient Jericho)
Jericho, Palestine
Tell es-Sultan is the mound of ancient Jericho, on the northern edge of the modern Palestinian city, where people…
14 tickets & tours
Catalhoyuk
Çumra, Turkey
Catalhoyuk is a Neolithic town on the Konya plain in central Turkey, settled from about 7500 BC and one of the largest…
1 ticket or tour
Choirokoitia (Khirokitia)
Larnaca, Cyprus
Choirokoitia is a Neolithic village on a hillside above the Maroni river in southern Cyprus, founded around 7000 BC and…
2 tickets & tours
Byblos
Byblos, Lebanon
Byblos, or Jbeil, on the Lebanese coast 42 km north of Beirut, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the…
4 tickets & tours
Nebet Tepe
Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Nebet Tepe is the rocky hill at the northern edge of Plovdiv Old Town where the city began, settled since about 4000…
No online ticket
Poulnabrone Dolmen
Ballyvaughan, Ireland
Poulnabrone is a Neolithic portal tomb on the limestone plateau of the Burren in County Clare, a great slab balanced on…
No online ticket
Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery
Sligo, Ireland
Carrowmore is a Neolithic cemetery of about 30 surviving stone tombs on the Coolera peninsula just west of Sligo, built…
No online ticket
Ggantija Temples
Xagħra, Malta
Ggantija is a pair of megalithic temples on the island of Gozo, begun around 3600 BC and older than the pyramids of…
1 ticket or tour
Hagar Qim
Qrendi, Malta
Hagar Qim is a prehistoric temple complex on a ridge above the south coast of Malta, built between about 3600 and 3200…
4 tickets & tours
Sarazm
Panjakent, Tajikistan
Sarazm, 15 km west of Panjakent in north-western Tajikistan, is one of the earliest proto-urban settlements in Central…
1 ticket or tour
Further down the caveat matters more. Byblos has been lived in since about 5000 BC, but much of what stands is Crusader and Roman; Troy is dated from Troy I, about 3000 BC; Stonehenge from its first earthwork of about 3100 BC, centuries before the big stones went up. The megalithic tombs of Ireland, Malta and Orkney make up most of the rest.
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