In 1908, the largest prehistoric Neolithic settlement in Europe was discovered in the village of Vinča, just a few miles from the Serbian capital Belgrade, on the shores of the Danube. Vinča was excavated between 1918 and 1934 and was revealed as a civilisation in its own right. Indeed, as early as the 6th millennium BC, three millennia before Dynastic Egypt, the Vinča culture was already a fully fledged civilisation. A typical town consisted of houses with complex architectural layouts and several rooms, built of wood that was covered in mud. The houses sat along streets, thus making Vinča the first urban settlement in Europe, but being far older than the cities of Mesopotamia and Egypt. And the town of Vinča itself was just one of several metropolises, with others at Divostin, Potporanj, Selevac, Pločnik and Predionica.