Hello, bonjour, and mont a ra!
It is a beautiful summer day, and I’m in the wild west of France,
also known as Brittany.
And today we’re asking the question:
what is the oldest building on earth?
It feels like one of those questions that we should all know the answer to.
We all know what the world’s tallest building is,
and we all know what the world’s longest building is
because we saw my video about it.
But what is the world’s oldest building?
Is it one of the Pyramids?
Can’t be the Great Wall of China again surely?
Are we counting Stonehenge as a building?
So what is it then?
Well arguably, the oldest building in the world...
is this!
Whatever that is.
This is the Cairn de Barnenez, on the north coast of Brittany,
and yes, here they pronounce the z at the end.
We’re just round the corner from the port town of Roscoff,
which you may know if you’re Irish or British
and you’ve ever taken the ferry to France.
The Cairn is a mausoleum made out of dry stone by the prehistoric inhabitants of the area,
it’s got 11 separate burial chambers inside,
and it is BIG.
The French novelist André Malraux described it
as the "Prehistoric Parthenon".
And honestly, I don’t understand why it’s not much more famous than it is.
So how old is it?
Good question!
It's so old that no-one seems to agree exactly when it was built.
The official website says anything between 4500 and 3500 BC,
the local tourist board says 5000BC,
and Wikipedia has different dates depending on which page you look at;
but experts say it was built around 4800BC,
and then extended 600 years later.
Either way, it is significantly older than the Pyramids,
Stonehenge,
or almost anything else.
So is this oldest surviving building on the planet?
Well, because of the uncertainty over when the Cairn was built,
we’re going to have to make liberal usage of the word "arguably" today,
but, arguably,
yes it is.
And we now cross immediately to pedantry corner.
Because - how do we work out what the oldest surviving building is?
To answer the question, you really need a doctorate in archaeology,
and years and years of serious fieldwork and research.
Whereas what I’ve got is the Wikipedia list of oldest known surviving buildings.
But we’re going to give it a bash!
Now I have to tell you, Barnenez is only in sixth position on that list,
so there are people in places like Turkey, Pakistan or Bulgaria who would all say
"What are you talking about?
We’ve got way older buildings than that thing!"
This is YouTube, they probably already have done in the comments.
But the problem is (wait for it…)
arguably,
none of the others are what you and I would call buildings.
Because this isn’t just about when they were constructed.
The way that you answer the question “what is the oldest surviving building on the planet?”
kind of depends on what you mean by the word “building”.
And the word “surviving”.
And which planet you’re on at the moment.
But most of you are from planet earth,
so let’s take a look at the other contenders for the terrestrial title.
First let’s go to Bulgaria.
(on Google Maps)
(for budget reasons)
This is Durankulak, which dates to 5500 BC,
so these structures are at least half a millennium older the Cairn.
But can you really call them buildings?
It’s up to you, but personally I would call those ruins.
They were buildings, but they’re not any more.
And the same goes for the incredible archaeological site of Mergarh in Pakistan,
which dates to 7000 BC,
and then there’s Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, the granddaddy of them all,
dating back to potentially 10000BC.
There are all amazing places, and you could definitely argue that they are buildings,
but equally, you could definitely argue that they’re not.
So I think we’ve got to the point where we need to ask:
what is a building?
(How did we get here?)
For me, a building is a structure that you can go inside for shelter.
It’s got an entrance, walls, and a roof.
But then you could say that about a natural cave or a large tent,
and I wouldn’t call them buildings,
so let’s add that a building has to be made entirely by humans,
and using solid, rigid materials.
Now all of those structures we’ve just seen
were made by humans, using solid, rigid materials.
But if we’re looking for the oldest *surviving* building,
only the Cairn still has the full set of an entrance, walls, and a roof.
Honestly... this is kind of amazing.
I’m inside the oldest building - arguably - in the world.
But then...
when does a building stop being a building?
For example, is the Colosseum in Rome a building?
It’s half-ruined, but I think you’d say it still counts.
And as you can see, the Cairn is not perfectly preserved either.
A large chunk was taken out in the 1950s because
- and I wish I was kidding -
the local mayor bulldozed it in order to use the stone for a nearby road construction project.
But I think what remains here is enough to be considered as a building.
So is there anything out there that could beat the Cairn de Barnenez?
The truth is it’s impossible to know for sure.
For a start, we don’t know exactly when this was built,
and on top of that, new discoveries are being made all the time.
In fact, if you find a building from 11000BC in your back garden tomorrow afternoon,
please let us know in the comments.
However, going back to the list,
there is one thing on there that I think might beat Barnenez,
and that is the Tower of Jericho, which dates to 8000BC,
and you have to admit, it looks pretty buildingy.
It’s got walls, an entrance, and a roof, and it’s all still there.
But at the same time, recent studies suggest that this tower was built
purely to line up with the sunset on the Summer solstice.
It had no other function.
Which means arguably, this is a monument, not a building.
In the end, it’s open to your interpretation.
Are there older surviving structures than Barnenez?
Yes absolutely.
But are they what you would call a building?
That’s the question.
For me, the Cairn fits all my definitions of what a building is,
and as far as I can tell, nothing else older can quite do that.
Which makes this...
the oldest surviving building on earth.
Arguably.
If you’d like to visit the Cairn,
the number 20 bus connects it to the nearby town of Morlaix,
and Morlaix is 3 hours from Paris by train.
But the bus only goes twice a day,
so if you can drive that’ll be much easier.
(Or hitch a ride from your helpful aunt and uncle who are on holiday in the area.)
Tickets are 6€ for adults, and free for kids,
but unfortunately, because of these steps at the entrance,
the site is not currently wheelchair accessible,
unless you can get them to open the private entrance at the side
which completely avoids the staircase.
Anyway, thank you all for watching,
and I'll see you soon.