How Did Prehistoric Humans Construct And Why?

Mesopotamians had the tendency to build their courtyards hidden from the front door view. In order to protect their house from street dust, they were placing them behind the corner of the passage.

In the book The Prehistory of Home Jerry Moore discusses the importance that home structures have had for humans over time in different places of the world. He says that “In addition to their basic and fundamental function of providing shelter from natural elements, dwellings are powerful and complex concentrates of human existence… our dwellings reflect and shape our lives” (Moore, 3). He believes that homes are representations of the existence of individual humans as well as their surroundings. Jerry Moore is successful in explaining the importance of home in archaeology throughout history with colorful examples as well as a comparison of the importance of the home in the past to the importance of the home in the future.

Around 650 A.D., the Mesa Verdean peoples initiated construction of apartment-style homes, termed by Spanish explorers as pueblos. The Puebloan architecture is original in that it utilized the local stone and mud deposits of the region to maintain the structural integrity of their burgeoning developments. As this community evolved into the twelfth century, Mesa Verdeans further integrated the geology of their environment into their lifestyles by building homes, known as cliff dwellings, within the naturally formed alcoves of Mesa Verde. By the thirteenth century, the Mesa Verdeans vacated this region due to severe droughts and subsequent social instability. Despite the later abandonment of their cliff dwellings, it is clear that the geology of Mesa Verde National Park impacted the lives of the Ancestral Puebloans significantly. The following sections provide detailed information regarding the rock formations that make up the geological

During the Paleolithic to the Neolithic period, there were some major cultural changes or contributions to the humanities that occurred. The Paleolithic lived a nomadic life in which they were known as nomadic hunters and gatherers. During the Paleolithic period (circa 40,000 – 8,000 B.C.E.) their form of art were wall paintings instituted deep inside the caves. They would stay by the opening of the cave, where there was light and depended on animals to feed on. Other than cave paintings, another form of their art was sculpting. The Paleolithic sculpts human figures, mostly female figures. The materials used were ivory, bone, horn, stone, and clay. Only a few were made of wood. By circa 8,000 B.C.E., hunters became farmers, using plants, seeds,

Metalurgy first made an appearance in Europe during the Neolithic. (Levack et al 2009:16) Architecture improved and in many areas dwellings were made with sturdy supplies like stone and brick. Some villages, particularly in Southwest Asia, were surrounded by impressive stone walls for protection against enemies. (Leonard 1973:18)

Native Americans for years were able to create and built a shelter, known as tipis, to fit their cultural and basic needs. In this paper I will discuss shelter structure and cultural construction of a tipi using information from Gerald A. Oetelaar article.

During construction of the house workers unearthed an ancient burial cave from the Second Temple period which still contained ornate oussuaries with bones and

The Sumerians first developed irrigation for their fields. This allowed the production of vegetables, barley, wheat, and the production of flax for oil and linen. The people of ancient Mesopotamia lived in mud brick houses with roofs constructed from mats of palm fronds or reeds of mud. The mud material used for the walls of their houses kept the temperature cool in the house, which helped with the heat from the scorching sun. If any damage was done to these houses, they were easily repaired;

Watkins notes there was a lot of thought put into the architecture of their houses, communal building and organization of their whole settlements (15). Now that the Neolithic’s were living in structures for the first time they were discovering the power to create and fashioned their own dwellings with symbolic realms which ended up “opening the way to the formation of new, larger, richer social worlds” (Watkins 15). Their constant maintenance and rebuilding of their homes shows their houses were just more than shelters, but rather “homes” (16). In (?) there is building in the center of the village with the floor 2 m below the surface. It is said to have been a public building that was multifunctional and could have been used to store food, for religious functions, for village meetings, or even where rituals were preformed (Watkins 17). One of the most remarkable sites, howerver, is Gobekli Tepe. What is interesting about Gobekli Tepe is it has no domestic houses or anything showing “normal stratigraphic accumulation of surfaces and occupation debris” (Watkins 18). T-shaped limestone monoliths surround the mound have animals carved into the limestone (LN). To this day it is still unknown how Gobekli Tepe is associated to the communities that built it (Watkins 18). The site could have been used as a cult center because it was geographically a notion of a “central place” (Wtakins

The Catal Hoyuk and its “12 successive building levels” (Kleiner, 2009, p. 25) consisted of dwellings that were built out of mud

Scientists believe that the first man-made shelter was made of tree branches and stones. The stones were placed at the center of the structure to hold the branches in place. Throughout history these structures slowly evolved in shape and form in ancient civilizations.

Some examples of human cultural development in the Paleolithic Culture would be that the humans gradually evolved from early members of the genus homo habilis. Since then they had evolved from those to hominid humans. Another example of human cultural development was the tools that were made from 4.4 billion to 1.6 million years ago. The tools that they would usually use were pebble tools, hand axes, and choppers. From 1 million to 25,000 years ago, the tools were changed, the tools were made to become flake tools as it was called.

Their early settlements were now being built with a greater sense of permanence. The early settlement inhabitants even erected their thatch houses on low apsidal shaped (oval) platforms. These platforms were constructed using a lime-gravel mixture called sascab, in addition to using white lime and stone.

An activity looked upon today as bad behavior today, may have further evolved early humans. Ferring, an American archaeologist who is excavating a hominid site in the Republic of Georgia, believes that throwing rocks taught Homo erectus communication and hand-eye coordination skills early on. With their brain being less than half the size of a human's brain today, Homo erectus were intelligent creatures none the less. The method of stone throwing helped humans to socialize early on with teamwork activities. Despite the average height of a Homo erectus male ranging from 4 feet and 9 inches to a little over 6 foot, they were no match for a hyena, not to mention a sabertooth tiger. Hurling rocks at larger animals was also a form of self-defense.

While the Southern Ndebele still live in homesteads, the design of the buildings within these homestead have changed since the time they immigrated to South Africa. Originally, the Nguni (Ndebele ancestors) styled houses with circular-wall huts with an archway opening. The first change was the introduction of clay walls around the hut by the Ndebele. However the rectangular nature of beds and tables did not suit the circular shape so the second change was derived from the Boer farm style housing and incorporated a rectangular floor plan for the home as opposed to a circular one. This appropriation led way to the third change which was the change from traditional roofing to that of corrugated iron roofing in order to make the roofing easier and more endurable when encounter different weather. This final change was appropriated from city dwellers. We can then see that the surrounding cultures and the modern time has influenced the Southern Ndebele. (From the