A 6,300-Year-Old Tomb Has Revealed a Secret That Rewrites History

Some archaeological discoveries matter because they fill a missing detail. Others matter because they force historians to question the whole route by which an idea was believed to have spread. The Valdelasilla site in central Spain belongs to that second category.

At first, it may sound like another ancient tomb. But the site, near Illescas in Toledo province, is around 6,300 years old and appears to be the oldest known monumental necropolis in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula. That matters because it challenges the older idea that early European megalithic tombs spread mainly from coastal regions into inland areas.