Choirokoitia

Around nine thousand years ago, one of the eastern Mediterranean's earliest known farming communities took root on a hillside in southern Cyprus. Choirokoitia, inhabited between the 7th and 4th millennia BC, preserves the round stone dwellings of a Neolithic village that has proved central to understanding how settled life spread through the region. Because much of the settlement still lies unexcavated, it remains a reserve for future archaeology — significance UNESCO recognized with World Heritage inscription in 1998.