http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/rock-hewn-churches-lalibela-ethiopia-00154

Ethiopia has seen its hard times in recent decades. However it remains the one land never to be conquered by foreigners. It also boasts magnificent rock-hewn churches, dating from the 13th Century. The name is apt; these holy sites had been literally carved from the hills of Ethiopia, centuries before the Renaissance began to turn back a thousand years of ignorance in Europe, before there was even a notion of such a place as ‘America’.