Investigations & syntheses
Long-form, documented and sourced articles connecting discoveries and telling the great transformations of humankind.
Off the northern coast of Scotland, a wind-swept archipelago harbours one of the world's densest and most fascinating archaeological landscapes. Orkney concentrates, within just a few square kilometres, megalithic tombs, giant stone circles and an exceptionally well-preserved Neolithic village. This dossier traces five millennia of human presence in this extraordinary archipelago, from the first hunter-gatherers to the builders of monuments that still astonish us today.
Read more →In the east, a quartz-knapping workshop 9,000 years old in the Faleme hills. In the west, over 1,000 laterite stone circles raised along the Gambia River -- the largest megalithic concentration in the world, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2006.
Read more →From Mesolithic forests to the first fields, from Göbekli Tepe to the megalithic alignments of Carnac: this dossier traces the greatest transformation in human history. In less than 7,000 years, Homo sapiens abandoned hunting and gathering to invent agriculture, animal husbandry, the permanent village, pottery and the first monumental architectures. Ancient genomics, Near Eastern archaeology, European megalithism and palaeopathology: a comprehensive and fully sourced overview of the Neolithic revolution and its lasting consequences.
Read more →On the island of Gozo, Malta, the Ġgantija temples were built between −3,600 and −2,500. They are the world's oldest freestanding stone structures, more than a millennium older than the pyramids of Giza. The civilisation that built them vanished without known descendants.
Read more →Built around −3,200 in Ireland, Newgrange is a passage mound 85 metres across whose burial chamber floods with light at the winter solstice sunrise, with a precision that required centuries of astronomical observation. Older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids, it remains one of European megalithism's greatest mysteries.
Read more →Nearly 3,000 stones erected in straight rows across 4 kilometres of Breton moorland: the Carnac alignments remain one of the most imposing and enigmatic megalithic monuments on Earth. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2025.
Read more →An Altar Stone from Scotland 700 km away, Welsh bluestones transported by humans, lunar alignments, feasting networks spanning the British Isles , a complete overview of 2024, 2026 research.
Read more →Farming reaches Europe via the Danube and the Mediterranean, then raises dolmens and alignments, from Carnac to Stonehenge. Five millennia that remade the continent.
Read more →A circle of [[megalithe|megaliths]] raised nearly 5,000 years ago on Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge keeps surprising us: in 2024 its Altar Stone was traced to Scotland, over 700 kilometres away.
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