Originally surrounded by 40 stone columns (originally wood) the Doric style exterior of the low-slung Temple of Hera was built on the south slopes of Kronos hill, complete with three distinct interior chambers. Interior walls broke up worship areas for different Greek gods, rooms which later became a home for some of Rome's ancient relics. The temple has a limestone base which runs east to west, longer than it is wide. Mud bricks, meanwhile, form the upper portion with wood and terracotta adorning the temple's interior. Unfortunately most of it was destroyed during an earthquake in the 4th century AD.

The first buildings constructed on the the rocky outcrop of the Acropolis of Athens were destroyed by Persians around 480 B.C., but that didn't stop a second 15-year effort from finishing a complete reconstruction that wrapped up around 432 B.C. The highlight of the Acropolis was the Parthenon and its gold and ivory statue of Athena, but there was plenty of other stuff to see, including the limestone foundation and columns made from Pentelic marble, an early use of the material.

Considered to be the world's first temple, the Gobekli Tepe contains at least 20 circular installations that contain several pillars surrounded by walls, some 200 pillars throughout the whole temple. The site is also home to rock statues with carvings of animals—foxes, snakes, wild boars, cranes and wild ducks—that could date back as far as 10,000 BC. Perhaps most interestingly, some of the construction features pillars that are T-shaped and weigh over 60 tons, leaving experts unsure of how such primitive humans accomplished such a difficult and complex task.

On a limestone plateau near the river Bougon is a stepped mound with a rectangular chamber, the Tumulus of Bougon. Inside the ancient mound is a series of passages and chamber walls formed by human-shaped orthostats, or out more simply "upright stones." A 90-ton capstone covers the main chamber, with the monolithic pillars dividing the room up into smaller subsections. When discovered, the location was filled with several vertical layers of skeletons and lots of pottery, which helped archaeologists identify the timeline of construction and discover just how early and impressive this structure is.

The widely famous Stonehenge is built from a mix of large sarsen stones—a type of sandstone found naturally in the south of England—and smaller bluestones. The largest sarsen stone, believed to be from Marlborough Downs about 20 miles from the site, weighs about 30 tons. The Wales-derived blue stones weigh between two and five tons each and were likely carried over 150 miles to reach their final resting place at the Stonehenge site.

The year 3300 B.C. sound a little too recent for the world's largest collection of standing stones? It's a relatively conservative guess. Some believe some of the stones that form the array known as the Carnac Stones in the Brittany region of France date all the way back to 4500 B.C. Many have guessed at the possible purpose of the megalithic site which may have been used to track to movement of the sun or the stars. We may never really know, but the sheer intensity of so hundreds and hundreds of carved stones placed in such a regimented order is compelling food for speculation.

It may seem like just a stone house, but the Knap of Howar in Scotland is actually the oldest preserved stone house in northern Europe. The farmstead's two buildings connected by a passage were built with split stone to a height of just over five feet and feature doorways facing the sea. A hole in the roof indicates the home was likely heated by fire and stone furniture found provides an even stronger indication that this was once an ancient residence.