Maeshowe belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 2800 BCE at Orkney. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
A passage tomb whose winter sun, like Newgrange, hits the rear wall; Vikings later carved runes into the chamber.
How it was made
Finest Neolithic masonry in Europe, a bermed mound, and a landscape with the Ring of Brodgar.
Why it still counts as a wonder
It never needed a Greek list to be a wonder: the labour, the alignment, or the survival is enough.
Graffiti from 1153 CE is part of the biography. The architecture was already 4,000 years old then.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 2800 BCE may have been founded earlier, rebuilt later, or famous only in one phase. Where ancient writers disagree — as they do for Babylon’s gardens — we say so.
This is story 81 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.