• Terra Amata provides the oldest known hard evidence of human-made shelter.
  • The spot was prime Neolithic hunting ground, located on what at the time was a beach, near a freshwater source.
  • A group returned there every year in the spring and summer, while chasing boar, deer, and other game.
  • While at Terra Amata, the hunters built temporary huts made of tree branches braced by stones, each with a stone-ringed hearth on the inside.
  • The repeat visits indicate that early humans, while nomadic, may have lived within relatively set territories.