In a quiet French valley stand the tumuli of Bougon, burial mounds raised around 4800 BC. Older than Stonehenge and the pyramids, they reveal how the first farmers honoured their dead in stone.
On a bluff in Almería, Los Millares was one of western Europe’s first towns — a Copper Age settlement ringed with stone walls, home to early metalworking and a vast necropolis of sun-facing tholos tombs.
On a drowned Breton island stands Gavrinis, a Neolithic passage tomb whose walls are almost entirely covered in swirling carvings — an artistic masterpiece created around 4000 BCE and then sealed away.
On a nine-metre mound by the Danube, the Vinča culture built fine pottery, thousands of figurines, Europe’s first copper, and mysterious signs some believe are the continent’s earliest script.
On a Breton headland stands the Cairn of Barnenez, a 75-metre stone monument with eleven burial chambers, raised around 4800 BCE — older than the pyramids and one of Europe’s oldest buildings.