English and the World · Spain · 11 · Almería · A1–C2 · A1–A2 free
Walls with towers on a dry hill, tombs with stone domes, and some of the first people in Iberia who knew how to make metal. Choose your level.
Los Millares, about 3200–2200 BC
About twenty kilometres from Almería, on a dry hill above a river, there are the ruins of a very old town: Los Millares. People lived here about five thousand years ago, in the Copper Age. They made tools and weapons from copper, one of the first metals people used.
The town had stone walls with round towers. Inside, there were round houses and a workshop for copper. Outside the walls, there were small forts on the hills, and about eighty tombs with stone domes, for whole families.
1891
Who found Los Millares? Workers building a railway in 1891. Who studied it? A Belgian engineer called Luis Siret, who lived in Spain. What did he find? Pots, copper tools, and objects from very far away: ivory from Africa and ostrich eggs.
What happened to the town? Nobody knows for sure. About 4,200 years ago, people left it. Today you can visit it, and walk past a rebuilt wall, a house and a tomb.
🦉 Want more? Sophia explains how questions are made, and the order of their words, in A Question of Order (Philo & Sophia, Lesson 18).
Language: subject questions and object questions
| Type | Form | Example |
|---|---|---|
| subject question: we ask about the person or thing that does the action | Who / What + verb (no did) | Who found it? Workers found it. What happened? |
| object question: we ask about the person or thing the action is done to | Who / What + did + subject + verb | What did he find? He found pots. |
⚠️ In a subject question there is no do / does / did: Who lived here?, not ✗ Who did live here? But: Where did they live?
Read the texts first. Press “Check my answers” at the end.
Choose the best answer.
1. When did people live at Los Millares?
2. What did the people make from copper?
3. What was outside the walls?
4. Who studied the town?
Write the verb (past simple) to complete the question.
5. Who the town? Workers did. (find)
6. Who here five thousand years ago? (live)
7. What to the town? Nobody knows. (happen)
8. What from Africa? Ivory and ostrich eggs. (come)
Write did or – if no word is needed.
9. What Siret find? Pots and tools.
10. Who built the walls? The people of the town. (Write – if no word is needed.)
11. Where they bury their families? In tombs outside the walls.
12. What they make from copper? Tools and weapons.
Go there!
Visit: Los Millares is near the village of Santa Fe de Mondújar. Go in the morning, wear a hat, and bring water: there is little shade. Then see the finds in the Archaeological Museum of Almería.
Your task: write six questions about an old place you know, three subject questions and three object questions, and answer them.
It tells how railway builders found a prehistoric town in 1891, how its people built walls with towers and tombs with domes, how they learned to smelt copper, and why archaeologists still argue about who ruled it and how it ended, with grammar, practice, etymology and a visit plan.
The A1–A2 version above is free for everyone.
It tells how railway builders found a prehistoric town in 1891, how its people built walls with towers and tombs with domes, how they learned to smelt copper, and why archaeologists still argue about who ruled it and how it ended, with grammar, practice, etymology and a visit plan.
The A1–A2 version above is free for everyone.