Paleolithic Era

3000000 BCE – 10000 BCE · 14 sites

The Palaeolithic is deep-time archaeology: caves, open-air scatters, and art whose dates come from charcoal, uranium-series, and stratigraphy rather than king lists. Filter this era, then open evidence grades on each dossier so “oldest” claims stay attached to a method.

All sites in this period

Uluru at sunset, the sacred sandstone monolith of the Aṉangu people, Northern Territory, Australia

Continent Record

Longest Recorded History in Oceania

Uluru

30000 BCE – 2019 CE

A vast sandstone monolith rising 348 metres from the central Australian desert — sacred to the Aṉangu people as a living embodiment of their Tjukurpa (creation-time) law, and the site of rock art and ceremonial evidence spanning tens of thousands of years of continuous Aboriginal cultural practice. Handed back to Aṉangu traditional ownership in 1985, Uluru's summit was permanently closed to climbers in 2019 in recognition of its unbroken sacred status.

Paleolithic

Featured

Country Record

Oldest Sanctuary in France

Lascaux

17000 BCE – 13000 BCE

A Paleolithic cave near Montignac, France, containing some of the finest figurative paintings in human history — approximately 600 paintings and 1,500 engravings created c. 17,000 BCE by Magdalenian hunter-gatherers.

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Paleolithic

Polychrome painted bison on the ceiling of Altamira Cave, Cantabria, Spain, created c. 14,000–16,500 years ago

Continent Record

Longest Recorded History in Europe

Altamira Cave

35000 BCE – 13000 BCE

A limestone cave in northern Spain whose ceiling, covered in vivid polychrome paintings of bison, horses, and deer created some 14,000–16,500 years ago, forced 19th-century science to accept for the first time that Ice Age humans were capable of sophisticated representational art. Dismissed as an obvious forgery when first announced in 1880 — no one believed "primitive" Paleolithic people could have painted anything so accomplished — Altamira was ultimately vindicated two decades later and is now recognised as one of the founding sites of Paleolithic art studies worldwide.

Paleolithic

Polychrome Magdalenian bison painted on the ceiling of Altamira Cave, Cantabria, Spain

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Continent Record

Earliest Known Site in Europe

Cave of Altamira

18500 BCE – 13000 BCE

The "Sistine Chapel of the Palaeolithic" — a limestone cave in northern Spain whose ceiling is painted with a panorama of Ice Age bison, horses, and deer dating to 18,500 years ago, the first prehistoric cave art ever recognised and among the greatest artistic achievements in human history.

Paleolithic

World Record

Oldest Known Site in the World

Olduvai Gorge

1900000 BCE – 10000 BCE

Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, exposes a 1.9 million-year record of human evolution, preserving early stone tools and fossils of key hominins like Paranthropus boisei and Homo habilis.

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Paleolithic

Prehistoric paintings of cave lions on the wall of Chauvet Cave, Ardèche, France, dated to c. 36,000 years ago

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Continent Record

Oldest Sanctuary in Europe

Chauvet Cave

36000 BCE – 21000 BCE

The oldest known and best-preserved figurative cave art on Earth — over a thousand painted and engraved images of lions, rhinoceroses, mammoths, and bears created some 36,000 to 28,000 years ago in a cave sealed by a rockfall roughly 21,000 years ago and rediscovered only in 1994. Its sophistication, including shading, perspective, and dynamic depictions of animal movement, predates Lascaux by more than fifteen thousand years and overturned assumptions about how gradually artistic technique developed among early Homo sapiens.

Paleolithic

Painted rock shelter 8 at Bhimbetka, Madhya Pradesh

New

Continent Record

Longest Recorded History in Asia

Bhimbetka Rock Shelters

100000 BCE – 1000 CE

A sandstone hill of painted rock shelters in the Vindhyas of Madhya Pradesh, with occupation from the Lower Palaeolithic through historic centuries, inscribed by UNESCO in 2003.

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PaleolithicMesolithicChalcolithic

Mouth of Hohle Fels cave in the Swabian Jura near Schelklingen, Germany

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World Record

Oldest Sanctuary in the World

Hohle Fels

40000 BCE – 10000 BCE

A limestone cave at Schelklingen in the Swabian Jura whose Aurignacian layers produced the Venus of Hohle Fels, early musical instruments, and, in 2026, two miniature mammoth-ivory bird carvings about 40,000 years old. The cave is part of the UNESCO Ice Age art serial property.

Paleolithic

Aboriginal rock art at the Anbangbang Gallery, Nourlangie Rock, Kakadu National Park, Australia

Continent Record

Southernmost Known Site in Oceania

Kakadu

20000 BCE – 1900 CE

One of the richest and longest continuous rock art galleries on Earth — thousands of painted sites across the stone country of Australia's Northern Territory, some layers dating back tens of thousands of years, others depicting 19th- and 20th-century European sailing ships, forming an unbroken visual record of Aboriginal life, belief, and history painted by the same cultural tradition across an almost unimaginable span of time. Traditional land of the Bininj and Mungguy peoples, Kakadu is one of the few places on Earth inscribed by UNESCO for both its natural and cultural World Heritage value.

Paleolithic

Prehistoric rock paintings on a sandstone wall at Tassili n'Ajjer, Algeria

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Continent Record

Longest Recorded History in Africa

Tassili n'Ajjer

10000 BCE – 1000 BCE

A vast sandstone plateau in the central Sahara sheltering the world's largest collection of prehistoric rock art — over 15,000 engravings and paintings spanning 12,000 years that document the Sahara's green past, its vanished animals, and its ancient peoples.

PaleolithicMesolithicNeolithic

Medieval ruins on the Dmanisi promontory, Kvemo Kartli, Georgia

World Record

Oldest Complex in the World

Dmanisi

1850000 BCE – 1770000 BCE

A medieval town and paleoanthropological site in Kvemo Kartli, Georgia, where 1.8-million-year-old Homo erectus fossils (including skull 5) are the earliest well-dated humans outside Africa.

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Paleolithic

The eroded dune formations known as the Walls of China at Lake Mungo, New South Wales, Australia

World Record

Oldest Settlement in the World

Lake Mungo

42000 BCE – 14000 BCE

A dry lakebed in remote southwestern New South Wales that holds the oldest confirmed human remains outside Africa — the 40,000-year-old skeletons known as Mungo Man and Mungo Lady, whose burials rank among the earliest evidence anywhere of deliberate cremation and ochre burial ritual. The eroding dune formations known as the Walls of China continue to expose new archaeological material, making Lake Mungo one of the most continuously important sites in the study of early human migration into Australia.

Paleolithic