Arkaim

52.6517°N, 59.5611°E.

Bronze Age circular settlement in the southern Urals of Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, dated to approximately 2100–1700 BCE. The site, discovered in 1987 during planned reservoir construction (which was halted), is a roughly circular fortified city 160 metres in diameter, with two concentric rings of 60 dwellings each, sharing common walls. The radial plan and concentric construction precisely match the Vedic descriptions of the city of King Yima in the Avesta. Arkaim is one of approximately 23 similar sites collectively termed the Sintashta culture — a candidate for the original Indo-Iranian homeland and the place where the chariot was invented; the world's oldest spoke-wheeled chariots, dated to ~2000 BCE, were recovered from Sintashta burials at the related Sintashta-Petrovka cemetery 200 km away. The summer-solstice and winter-solstice sunrise alignments visible from the central plaza match those described in Vedic ritual texts.

The world's oldest chariot was unearthed near a Bronze Age city built like a Vedic mandala — two thousand years before the Vedas were written down.