Heritage

In-depth guides that start simply enough for children and go deep enough for researchers.

48 articles

• Heritage · c. 3000–1500 BCEStonehengeStonehenge is a ring of giant standing stones on Salisbury Plain in southern England, built and rebuilt by prehistoric farming communities over more than a thousand years from about 3000 BCE, and lined up with the sunrise on the longest day and the sunset on the shortest day of the year.Map
• Heritage · c. 2600–2000 BCECaral (Sacred City of Caral-Supe)Caral is a city of stone pyramids and round sunken plazas in the desert of Peru that people built almost 5,000 years ago, making it one of the oldest cities anywhere in the Americas.Map
• Heritage · c. 2600–1900 BCEMohenjo-daroMohenjo-daro is the ruin of one of the world's first great cities, built about 4,500 years ago beside the Indus River in what is now Pakistan, with straight streets, brick houses, hundreds of wells and covered drains.Map
• Heritage · c. 2589–2566 BCEGreat Pyramid of GizaThe Great Pyramid of Giza is a gigantic stone tomb built about 4,500 years ago for the Egyptian king Khufu, and it is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world that still stands.Map
• Heritage · c. 1900–1375 BCEKnossosKnossos, on the island of Crete, was the largest centre of the Bronze Age Minoan civilisation, a maze-like palace of courtyards, stairways and painted rooms built nearly 4,000 years ago that later Greeks remembered as the home of King Minos and the Labyrinth.Map
• Heritage · c. 1350–500 BCELapita cultureLapita is the name archaeologists give to an ancient seafaring people and their culture, recognized above all by finely stamped pottery, who around 3,300–2,800 years ago sailed from the Bismarck Archipelago near New Guinea into the open Pacific and became the first humans to settle Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa—the ancestors of the Polynesians.Map
• Heritage · c. 1300–1046 BCEYinxuYinxu, near the modern city of Anyang in China, is the site of the last capital of the Shang dynasty, where kings ruled about 3,300 to 3,000 years ago and left behind palaces, great tombs, bronze vessels and the oldest large body of Chinese writing, carved on oracle bones.Map
• Heritage · c. 900–200 BCEChavín de HuántarChavín de Huántar is a stone temple high in the Andes of Peru, built about 3,000 years ago, where pilgrims walked through dark underground passages to meet a fierce carved god called the Lanzón.Map
• Heritage · c. 518–330 BCEPersepolisPersepolis is the ruined palace city of the Persian kings in southwestern Iran, built about 2,500 years ago on a huge stone platform and covered with carvings of people from all over the empire bringing gifts to the king.Map
• Heritage · c. 500 BCE – 499 CENazca LinesThe Nazca Lines are huge drawings and long straight lines that people in the desert of southern Peru made on the ground about 1,500 to 2,500 years ago by moving dark stones aside to show the lighter ground underneath.Map
• Heritage · 447–438 BCEParthenonThe Parthenon is a great marble temple built for the goddess Athena on the Acropolis of Athens between 447 and 432 BCE, famous as the model of classical Greek architecture and sculpture, and for its long and troubled later history.Map
• Heritage · c. 312 BCE – 106 CEPetraPetra is an ancient city in the desert of southern Jordan whose people, the Nabataeans, carved temples and tombs straight into rose-coloured cliffs and grew rich by guiding caravans that carried incense and spices.Map
• Heritage · c. 300 BCE – 349 CEPyramids of MeroëThe pyramids of Meroë are clusters of small, steep stone pyramids in the desert of Sudan where the kings and queens of the African kingdom of Kush were buried for more than 600 years.Map
• Heritage · c. 285–48 BCELibrary of AlexandriaThe Library of Alexandria was a huge royal collection of books in ancient Egypt, where scholars from many lands gathered more than 2,200 years ago to collect, copy and study everything that had been written.Map
• Art · c. 200 BCE – 479 CEAjanta CavesThe Ajanta Caves are about thirty Buddhist temples and monasteries carved by hand into a curving cliff in India between about 2,200 and 1,500 years ago, and their walls hold some of the most beautiful ancient paintings in Asia.Map
• Heritage · c. 100 BCE – 549 CETeotihuacanTeotihuacan was a huge ancient city in central Mexico, home to perhaps 100,000 people about 1,500 years ago, famous for its giant pyramids, its long central avenue and its painted apartment buildings, whose builders’ name and language are still a mystery.Map
• Heritage · c. 113–125 CEPantheon, RomeThe Pantheon is a Roman temple built almost 1,900 years ago whose giant round concrete roof, with a hole open to the sky at its top, still stands today as the largest dome of its kind in the world.Map
• Heritage · c. 300–400 CEObelisk of AxumThe Obelisk of Axum is a giant stone pillar, about as tall as an eight-storey building, carved around 1,700 years ago in the African kingdom of Aksum to look like a tall house and to mark the burial place of its rulers.Map
• Heritage · c. 350–935 CEGyeongju Historic AreasThe Gyeongju Historic Areas are five groups of ruins, royal tombs, temples and fortresses in and around Gyeongju, South Korea, which was the capital of the Silla kingdom for about a thousand years.Map
• Heritage · c. 366–1368 CEMogao CavesThe Mogao Caves are hundreds of Buddhist cave temples dug into a desert cliff near Dunhuang in western China over a thousand years, filled with paintings and statues, and home to a hidden library of tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts.Map
• Heritage · c. 427–1200 CENalanda MahaviharaNalanda was a huge Buddhist monastery in eastern India where, for about 800 years, thousands of monks from across Asia lived, studied, debated and copied books, making it one of the most famous centres of learning in the ancient world.Map
• Heritage · 532–537 CEHagia SophiaHagia Sophia is a huge domed building in Istanbul that was built as a Christian church for the emperor Justinian in just five years (532–537), later became a mosque, then a museum, and is a mosque again today.Map
• Heritage · c. 600–1200 CEChichen ItzaChichen Itza was one of the largest and most powerful cities of the ancient Maya, in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, famous for its stepped pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, its giant ball court and its sacred well.Map
• Heritage · c. 607 CEHōryū-jiHōryū-ji is a Buddhist temple near Nara in Japan, traditionally founded by Prince Shōtoku in 607, whose main hall and five-storey pagoda, rebuilt in the late seventh century, are among the oldest wooden buildings in the world.Map