Prehistory
Natufian Culture: The First Settled Villages of the Levant
A late hunter-gatherer culture whose sedentary villages and intensive use of wild cereals laid the groundwork for the Neolithic Revolution.
Era · Before c. 3000 BC
Prehistory
From the formation of Earth and the age of dinosaurs to the first cave art and monuments, before writing was invented.
Prehistory
Niaux Cave: The Salon Noir and Magdalenian Art of Ariège
Niaux became one of the best-known painted caves of the Magdalenian period and one of the few original decorated caves in France still open to small guided groups.
Prehistory
Abu Hureyra: Early Farming and Climate Change in Syria
One of the most important records of the transition from foraging to farming; the site was flooded by the Tabqa Dam reservoir in the 1970s.
Prehistory
Clovis Culture: The Ice Age Hunters of Ancient North America
A widespread Ice Age tool tradition of North America, once thought to mark the first Americans but now known to post-date earlier human settlement.
Prehistory
Creswell Crags: Britain's Only Known Ice Age Cave Art
The 2003 discovery of engravings in Church Hole gave Britain its first confirmed Palaeolithic cave art.
Prehistory
Swimming Reindeer: Ice Age Sculpture in Mammoth Ivory
The carving became one of the best-known works of Ice Age art and a key object in the British Museum's prehistory collection.
Prehistory
Rouffignac Cave: The Cave of the Hundred Mammoths, Dordogne
After an initial dispute over authenticity, Rouffignac was accepted as a major Magdalenian painted cave, known above all for its mammoths.
Prehistory
Gwion Gwion Rock Paintings of the Kimberley, Australia
Dating of mud wasp nests placed the Gwion Gwion style at about 12,000 years ago, confirming it as an ancient part of Aboriginal Australian rock art traditions.
Prehistory
Wrangel Island Mammoths: The Last Survivors of Their Kind
An isolated mammoth population persisted for about 6,000 years after its island was cut off, then died out around 4,000 years ago for reasons that are still debated.
Prehistory
Tassili n'Ajjer Rock Art: Prehistoric Paintings of a Green Sahara
One of the world's largest groups of prehistoric rock art, recording thousands of years of climate change in the Sahara; a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982.
Prehistory
Neolithic Revolution: How Farming Began in the Fertile Crescent
Farming and herding replaced foraging as the main way of life in the Near East and spread from there to Europe, North Africa and South Asia.
Prehistory
Göbekli Tepe: The World's Oldest Monumental Temple Site
One of the oldest known monumental sites in the world; a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2018 that has transformed ideas about early Neolithic society.