In central Turkey, thousands of people once lived in a honeycomb town with no streets, entering their homes through the roof and burying their dead beneath the floor. Meet Çatalhöyük, one of humanity’s first great experiments in living together.

Built roughly 11,500 years ago by hunter-gatherers in southeastern Turkey, Göbekli Tepe is older than farming, writing and the pyramids — and it changed how we understand the dawn of civilization.

People have lived at Jericho for around 11,000 years without a break. It holds the oldest known town wall and tower on Earth, and some of humanity’s first portraits — the haunting plastered skulls of its Neolithic dead.

Older than the pyramids and Stonehenge, this Irish passage tomb was built so that on the winter solstice, the rising sun pours down a stone passage and lights its hidden chamber. Inside the wonder of Newgrange.

Built and rebuilt over many centuries on Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge still guards its secrets. Here is what we actually know about who raised it, how, and why — and the myths worth letting go.