Chauvet cave

“What was so important to these early people that they gathered to build (and bury) the stone rings? The gulf that separates us from Gobekli Tepe's builders is almost unimaginable.” - Smithsonian Reporter Andrew Curry [caption id=

Plain of Jars The Plain of is a megalithic archaeological landscape in Laos. Scattered in the landscape of the Xieng Khouang plateau, Xieng Khouang, Lao PDR, are thousands of megalithic jars. These stone jars appear in clusters, ranging from a single or a few to several hundred jars at lower

The oldest known cave art in Europe is the Chauvet Cave in France.

These finds have stumped scientists and captured imaginations.

Aurochs between Reindeer Chauvet Cave

Marvels of engineering, vanishing civilizations and a granite guide to post-apocalyptic survival: these 12 monuments and ruins are mysterious and strange.

Altamira Cave Paintings. Upper Paleolithic paintings of animals such as wisent (European bison) and horses cover the low cave ceiling. It was discovered, by modern man at least, in 1880 and was the first example of prehistoric art ever discovered. It changed the views on our ancestors dramatically.

Lascaux painting of reindeer

more from Gobekli Tepe

Lascaux. As the art critic John Berger once said of these painters, they appear to have had "grace from the start." Picasso was even more awestruck. "We have invented nothing," he remarked, after a visit to Lascaux in 1940 to inspect the handiwork of his Stone Age predecessors.

Said to be found in Mazanderan, Iran (A. Pope, "Ancient Persian Art: Animal sculpture in gold and electron", ILN, March 2, 1935, p. I, lower figure); probably between 1930 and 1935, acquired by Thomas Lavington Jacks, Tehran; 1938, purchased by Joseph Brummer from Thomas Lavington Jacks, London; 1947, acquired by the Museum, purchased from the estate of Joseph Brummer, New York

Chauvet Caves. A string of three chambers, 1,700 feet long, as well as one connecting gallery and three vestibules, are all covered with masterworks breathtaking in their use of perspective (as in overlapping mammoths) and shading, techniques that were supposedly not invented until millennia later. One animal, probably a bison, is composed of nothing but red dots.

Turkey, Gobekli Tepe. Lion pillar, 9th millennium bc.

Whether you are religious or not; it must be accepted that religion has been with us for a very long time. Some of the most monumental structures ever made have had religious functions. Even today it is possible to be moved by the ruins of at these sites even though the people who made them, and sometimes the gods they were raised to, have disappeared. Here I present ten of the most important ancient religious sites. Pop in the comments any you think I should have included.