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 roof. 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.
This article lists the oldest known surviving free-standing buildings constructed in the world, including on each of the continents and within each country. 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 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) 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.
This article lists the oldest known surviving free-standing buildings constructed in the world, including on each of the continents and within each country. 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 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) 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.
