A line of thirteen stone towers in the Peruvian desert forms the oldest known solar observatory in the Americas, tracking the sun across the year with astonishing precision over 2,000 years ago.
At a Neolithic village in China, people made flutes from crane bones that still play a musical scale nine thousand years later, brewed an ancient rice drink, and carved mysterious symbols. Meet Jiahu.
Centuries before Çatalhöyük, people in Cappadocia already built streetless houses entered through the roof, kept early sheep, and even performed brain surgery. Meet Aşıklı Höyük.
A great mound in northeastern Syria suggests cities grew up in the north of Mesopotamia just as early as in the famous south, and it left behind thousands of haunting eye idols.
Before Mohenjo-daro or Harappa, there was Mehrgarh: a 9,000-year-old village in Pakistan where people first farmed, made pottery, worked copper, and even practiced dentistry.