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.
Region
Europe
Prehistory
Lepenski Vir: Mesolithic Village of the Danube Gorges
Excavated in the 1960s and moved uphill before the Iron Gate I dam flooded its original location, Lepenski Vir became a key site for understanding the transition from foraging to farming in south-east Europe.
Prehistory
Star Carr: Britain's Most Famous Mesolithic Site in Yorkshire
Star Carr became the best-known Mesolithic site in Britain and one of the most important in Europe for understanding life after the last Ice Age.
Prehistory
Domestication of Cattle: From Wild Aurochs to Farm Herds
The aurochs was domesticated into taurine cattle in the Near East and into zebu cattle in South Asia, creating one of humanity's most important farm animals.
Prehistory
Domestication of the Cat: How Wildcats Joined Early Farmers
The Near Eastern wildcat became the domestic cat, which spread with farmers and traders to nearly every part of the world.
Prehistory
Cheddar Man: Britain's Oldest Near-Complete Skeleton
The skeleton became Britain's best-known Mesolithic human, and its 2018 genome analysis reshaped public ideas about the appearance of early Britons.
Prehistory
Sesklo: One of Europe's Earliest Neolithic Settlements
Sesklo became one of the best-known early farming villages in Europe and the type site of the Middle Neolithic Sesklo culture of Thessaly.
Prehistory
Spread of Farming into Europe: The Neolithic Expansion
Over roughly 2,500 years farming replaced foraging across most of Europe, largely carried by migrant farmers of Anatolian ancestry who gradually mixed with local hunter-gatherers.
Prehistory
Almendres Cromlech: The Largest Stone Circle in Iberia
A megalithic enclosure of about 95 standing stones, the largest such monument in the Iberian Peninsula.
Prehistory
Vinča Culture: Balkan Neolithic Tells, Figurines and Symbols
A long-lived Neolithic and Copper Age culture whose villages, figurines, sign system and copper metallurgy made it one of the most advanced societies of prehistoric Europe.
Prehistory
Linear Pottery Culture: The First Farmers of Central Europe
The first farming culture of central Europe, which settled the loess lands in a few centuries and ended in a period of crisis around 5000-4900 BC, giving way to regional successor cultures.
Prehistory
Cucuteni-Trypillia Culture: Europe's Neolithic Mega-Settlements
A long-lived farming culture that built the largest settlements in Europe of its time before breaking up into regional groups around 3000 BC.