the region around 4,000 years ago. Many dolmens, tumuli and megaliths have been found in Béarn dating to this era, suggesting that ancestor worship was an important religious activity in neolithic Béarn. Construction of cromlêhs in Béarn continued into the Bronze Age. Fortified villages were also constructed in Neolithic Béarn, and remains of these have been found near Asson, Bougarber and Lacq. Antiquity Béarn was occupied by Ligurians around 3000 years ago. By 500 BC, Iberians appear to have replaced the Ligurians. The names of several towns in Béarn end in -os (e.g. Gelos, Urdos and Arros) which suggests an Iberian origin. The region became part of the Roman Empire in the first century BC. Diocletian included Bearn in the Roman province of Novempopulania. Roman influence in the region waned in the fifth century AD, and Béarn experienced multiple barbarian invasions. Béarn was successively conquered by the Vandals, the Visigoths, the Merovingians and finally the Carolingians. The fifth century AD also saw the arrival of Christianity in Béarn. The rural character of Béarn meant that Christianity took longer to become established there than elsewhere in France. Middle Ages The Vascons settled on the land between the Garonne and the Pyrenees, which the Franks had conquered from the Visigoths, and from the 6th century onwards controlled this territory; a duchy of Vasconia (then Gascony) was formed. In the 7th century, Odon had a large kingdom stretching from the Pyrenees to the Loire with Toulouse as its capital. The language commonly spoken by the Vascons was Aquitanian, although its area of influence continued to decline with the increasing Romanisation of the region from the 1st century BC. The Duchy of Gascony became fragmented from the 9th century onwards, allowing the creation of the Viscounty of Bearn. The people of Béarn thus organised themselves for the first time in an entity of their own. The first reigning dynasty was the Centulle family. It was also at this time, around the 8th or 9th century, that Beneharnum was devastated by the Normans. Morlaàs then became the new capital of a nascent principality. The Centulle allowed the primitive Béarn to extend to the south and east, and several marriages led to the integration of the viscounty of Oloron around 1050 and then that of Montaner in 1085. The country of Orthez was annexed in 1194 under the Moncade dynasty, and all these territories together formed