Skara Brae belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 3180 BCE at Orkney, Scotland. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
A Neolithic village of stone dressers, beds, and drains, preserved under sand until a 19th-century storm.
How it was made
Houses linked by covered passages. No wood needed: Orkney built furniture in flagstone.
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.
It is a wonder of the domestic. Palaces get lists; this is how a prehistoric living room looked.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 3180 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 78 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.