From some googling: the French Ministry of Culture has produced an animated tour of the caves at Lascaux, which date back to 17,000 BC. (For an English version, click “Accessibilité” and then “English” on the left hand side. You might want to turn the sound [“son”] off too.)

From Kelley DeVries: a slideshow of the ten oldest man-made structures still standing on earth. The pyramids don’t even appear!

Number one is Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, which has apparently been under excavation since 1994 but is only just getting widespread publicity now. It’s monumental, but c. 11 500 years old, i.e. very old indeed, predating sedentism, agriculture, the wheel, animal husbandry, etc. The archaeologist’s thesis is that religion impelled civilization, and not the other way around, that paleolithic people came together to build a major cult center to negotiate with the supernatural, and that the need to tend this site gave rise to intentional crop cultivation, etc. It will be most interesting to see if this idea pans out (less than 5% of the site has been excavated and the dig could go on for another fifty years). I was first apprised of this structure by an interesting article in Smithsonian Magazine, which also had an amusing comment thread: some people are concerned how this discovery vindicates biblical history, while another one wants to know how archaeologists like Gimbutas and Eisler would fit it into the “sacred Earth mother” narrative. But the most of all the Armenians would like you to know that this site is not Turkish, it is Armenian, and proves the antiquity of the Armenian people.