List of oldest extant buildings

This is a list of oldest extant buildings.

Criteria

A building is defined as any human-made structure used or interface for supporting or sheltering any use or continuous occupancy. In order to qualify for this list, a structure must:

• be a recognisable building;
• incorporate features of building work from the claimed date to at least in height;
• be largely complete or include building work to this height for most of its perimeter.
• contain an enclosed area with at least one entry point.

This deliberately excludes ruins of limited height and statues. The list also excludes:

• dolmens, a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of three or more upright stones supporting a large flat horizontal capstone. Dolmens were typically covered with earth or smaller stones to form a tumulus (which are included in the list). In many instances, that covering has weathered away, leaving only the stone "skeleton" of the burial mound intact. Neolithic dolmens are extremely numerous, with over 1,000 reported from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany alone.
• cairns, which are simply large piles of loose stones (as opposed to chambered cairns)
• standing stone rings, such as Stonehenge, also do not count because they are not enclosed and do not have roofs.

Dates for many of the oldest structures have been arrived at by radiocarbon dating and should be considered approximate.

By age

The following are amongst the oldest buildings in the world that have maintained the requirements to be such. Occupation sites with older human made structures, such as those in Göbekli Tepe do exist, but the structures are monuments and do not meet the definition of building (which can be seen above). Many of the buildings within the list contain primarily bricks, but most importantly maintain their walls and roofs. There are numerous extant structures that survive in the Orkney islands of Scotland, some of the best known of which are part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site. The list also contains many large buildings from the Egyptian Age of the Pyramids.

By continent

The following are amongst the oldest known extant buildings on each of the major continents.

By country

The following are among the oldest buildings in their respective countries.

By function, structure and building material

The following are probably the oldest buildings of their type.

See also

• List of oldest buildings in Scotland
• List of oldest buildings in the Americas
• List of oldest buildings in the United Kingdom
• List of oldest church buildings
• List of oldest continuously inhabited cities
• List of oldest synagogues
• List of the oldest buildings in the United States
• List of the oldest mosques

• Los Millares, a Chalcolithic site in Almería, Spain including both ruins and reconstructions
• Antequera Dolmens Site, Antequera Málaga Spain, a cultural heritage ensemble comprising 3 cultural monuments.

References