Architecture: Sacred Caves and Primitive Huts to Megalithic Structures
Chapter 1: Architecture as a Second Nature: Sacred Caves and Primitive Huts
I. Architecture as a Second Nature: Sacred Caves and Primitive Huts
A. The Act of Dwelling: Shelter and Symbol
The concept of architecture emerged between approximately 500,000 to 3000 BCE, centered around two recurring themes: symbol and shelter.
The mythical first dwelling, known as the primitive hut, was a global phenomenon.
Early architectural endeavors were tentative and unobtrusive, with designers creating shelters within the natural contours of the earth.
Examples include shelters developed by pre-human hominids, such as those associated with "Lucy" in the trees of Central Africa over 3 million years ago.
Further examples are found at the Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania.
Neanderthal hearths represent significant early forms of shelter and communal space.
Notable hearths include those at the great cave of Escale near Marseilles, southern France, and the cave of "Peking Man" at Zhoukoudian, China.
Neanderthal hunter-gatherers constructed huts in open areas as early as 400,000 BCE.
Traces of twenty oval huts have been discovered at the camp of Terra Amata, near Nice in southern France.
The Stone Age:
Anthropologists designate the extensive period of prehistory as the "Stone Age," named for the dominant technology of stone tools.
Around 40,000 BCE, Neanderthals coexisted with, but were eventually supplanted by, the Cro-Magnon peoples, a distinct lineage of Homo sapiens sapiens.
Homo sapiens began to develop religious behaviors.
The formation of cults, aimed at alleviating human anxiety, laid the groundwork for architecture as a setting for ritual actions. This conferred a new status upon the cave, transforming it into a sanctuary.
Hunters might establish dwellings at the cave's entrance, while reserving the dark, interior recesses for rituals concerning life, death, and the afterlife.
Stone-Age nomads started utilizing painting and sculpture to adorn specific hillside caves, elevating them to special status.
Illustrative sites include the caves at Lascaux, in southwestern France.
Another significant site is Altamira, in northwestern Spain.
The Chauvet Cave is considered Europe's oldest, with a tentative dating around 30,000 BCE.
Similar to Lascaux and Altamira, entry was from above, leading through a three-part sequence of descending spaces marked by ritual symbols.
The "end chamber" of the Chauvet Cave features a central iconography: a painting of a gigantic woman, believed to be linked to a cult of the Great Goddess of the Earth.
B. Living Together: Neolithic Settlements in Southwest Asia
Around 16,000 BCE, a dramatic climate change occurred, prompting humans to exert more active control over their environment, fundamentally reshaping the land.
This involved channeling water for irrigation and management.
Terracing hillsides for agriculture.
Shaping fields through consistent tilling.
Constructing shelters from indigenous materials like mud, wood, and stone, and covering them with woven grasses and animal hides.
Clustering their dwellings into villages, leading to the formation of early settlements.
The earliest Stone-Age settlers migrated to Southwest Asia, where wild grains flourished abundantly.
Oval structures were uncovered in 1994 at Göbekli Tepe, a mound in southeastern Turkey.
These initial architectural works were created by a community of hunter-gatherers, suggesting early complex social structures even before widespread agriculture.
The architects of the "temples" at Göbekli Tepe arranged a series of T-shaped megaliths in radial positions, functioning as ribs within the thick oval walls constructed from stone and rubble.
These prized stones, towering to approximately twice human height, weighed up to 20 tons and necessitated the combined effort of hundreds of individuals to transport them from quarries. The builders meticulously carved these megaliths with animal figures in relief.
At some point in the early 8^{th} millennium BCE, the entire site was intentionally buried under a substantial layer of soil, hiding it from view.
The transition to agriculture served as a catalyst for the emergence of the earliest forms of urbanism in Southwest Asia.
Jericho, settled around 7500 BCE, holds the distinction of being the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.
The discovery of imported obsidian indicates that these nascent towns in Palestine maintained distant trading relationships.
The initial cluster of round houses strategically exploited a spring of freshwater, now known as Elisha's Fountain.
Hunters, originally following prey to this water source, gradually adopted farming and a more sedentary way of life.
The inhabitants of Neolithic Jericho constructed an impressive fortification to safeguard their homes and silos, comprising a substantial wall, a conical tower, and numerous small round houses situated within the wall's perimeter.
Around 6500 BCE, the original town fell to external groups; the newcomers introduced a new architectural paradigm, building rectangular rather than round houses.
Khirokitia, located on a hillside on the southern coast of the island of Cyprus, was contemporary with Jericho.
It shared several architectural characteristics with ancient Jericho, including an encircling ditch, a stone wall, and a collection of small round houses.
Uniquely, Khirokitia featured a rounded plaza with a magnificent vista, which functioned as a central location for social exchange and community assembly.
This specific type of public space had no known precedent or later imitators.
Çatalhöyük, situated on the Konya Plain of southern Turkey, was the largest and most intricate Neolithic settlement in Southwest Asia.
Çatalhöyük emerged as a transitional settlement, balancing elements of both nomadic and agricultural lifestyles.
Its remarkable success stemmed primarily from its strategic control over the obsidian market, a valuable trade commodity.
Entry into a typical house was effected through a hole in the flat roof, accessed by a wooden ladder.
The house plans at Çatalhöyük exhibited a high degree of uniformity, suggesting a standardized building practice.
The half-timber construction method employed at Çatalhöyük became a standard architectural practice for centuries.
II. Vernacular Architecture: A Language of Mud, Logs, Hides, and Stones
A. Nomadic Shelter: Tensile Strength in Temporary Dwellings
Nomadic communities refined techniques for constructing progressively lighter structures, utilizing tensile strategies that enabled them to build robust shelters with minimal materials.
Contemporary indigenous groups, such as the San (or Basarwa) people of Botswana and the Baka Pygmies of Cameroon, continue to live in conditions akin to primeval hunter-gatherers.
Baka Pygmy women are traditionally responsible for constructing half-dome structures from intertwined branches, which are then covered with woven grasses and leaves.
Presently, both the Baka and San peoples face governmental and societal pressures toward permanent settlement, impacting their traditional architectural practices.
The Tuareg people have traversed the Sahara Desert for millennia, functioning as traders and shepherds.
They transport tents made of sewn hides and woven goat hair; the structural integrity of Tuareg dwellings depends heavily on the tensile forces exerted by their coverings and ropes.
The indigenous nomadic peoples of North America developed portable shelters, carrying and assembling tipis (as used by the Sioux) or constructing domical wigwams (as used by the Chippewa).
The nomads inhabiting the steppes of Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan traditionally construct yurts, highly efficient and adaptable mobile dwellings.
B. Building out of Earth
Unbaked mud was the most prevalent building material in the ancient world and remains widely favored among traditional builders globally.
While flexible, structures made of unbaked mud are inherently vulnerable to seismic tremors.
The simplest and safest method of building with earth involves digging into or cutting directly from the ground.
For three millennia, builders carved deep into the Loess Plateau in the northwestern Shaanxi Province in China, creating distinctive pit houses.
The prehistoric village of Banpo is recognized as one of the most significant archaeological sites in China, showcasing early earth construction.
The next most common method of earth construction involves mixing soil, water, straw, reeds, and leaves into cohesive balls that can be stacked. This technique is known as the cob technique in English and banco in West Africa.
The Batammaliba people, whose name translates to “architects of the earth,” inhabit the region spanning Togo, Burkina Faso, and Benin, and construct their walls by coiling mud balls, typically on circular plans.
Two of the most widespread variants of earth construction, rammed earth (often referred to by its French term pisé) and adobe brick, demand greater skill and foresight in their execution.
Rammed earth construction involves pouring slightly moist earth into a rigid, wooden formwork and then pounding it into place, layer upon layer, using a heavy rammer.
Examples include the unique dwelling complexes built by the Hakka people in Fujian Province, China.
Adobe homes were featured in Neolithic Jericho and other settlements across Southwest Asia.
The distinctive mud-brick tower houses of Yemen are another striking example.
This method was also employed in various semi-permanent settlements in South America, Africa, and Asia.
With sufficient skill and careful planning, builders can assemble mud bricks into sturdy vaulted coverings.
This often involved the use of falsework (temporary supports).
The catenary arch, a natural structural form, provided inspiration for stable curving structures.
The development of standardized fired bricks further enhanced the strength and durability of earth construction.
C. The Wooden Skeleton
The expansive forests of northern Europe served as the primary source of building materials for the primeval settlers of the region.
Variations of the Neolithic longhouse architectural type have been discovered at numerous European sites, geographically dispersed across France, Norway, Romania, and Greece.
Longhouse builders consistently constructed rectangular structures, typically measuring at least 10 meters (33 feet) in length, with designated spaces for farm animals either at one end or along the sides.
The longhouse concept also materialized in many other cultures beyond Europe, including Southeast Asia and North America, bearing similar social implications of a single enclosed space accommodating a large extended family and its livestock.
Another significant vernacular wooden building type is the stilt house.
Neolithic villagers residing along Swiss lakes, specifically at Egolzwil, constructed their modest wooden houses on raised piles to safeguard them from sudden floods.
The timber frame house exhibits some of the expediency and tensile properties characteristic of temporary huts built with poles.
While susceptible to fire and rot, wooden frames have proven remarkably resilient in seismically active locations, making them the preferred construction method in regions such as Japan, California, and Turkey.
The cruck frame, predominantly found in England, stands out as one of the most primitive yet spectacular iterations of the wooden skeleton construction.
Although no actual prehistoric examples of wood joinery have survived to the present day, various representations of wood sculpted in stone offer insight into these techniques.
Such representations can be observed at Stonehenge in Neolithic England.
Similar depictions are found at Saqqâra in ancient Egypt.
And in the classical Greek architecture of The Parthenon.
D. Of Stones and Compression
Neolithic builders strategically selected stone for critical structural components such as foundations, buttressing elements, or the central hearth.
Skara Brae, a well-preserved Neolithic settlement, comprised eight small stone houses interconnected by narrow, stone-lined alleys.
At Ain Ghazal, inhabitants constructed their dwellings using rectangular sack walls, a clever technique involving a sandwich of two outer layers of stone packed with an infill of mud and rubble.
The roof historically represented the weakest structural component of prehistoric houses.
The most straightforward method for covering a room was to place a solid slab of stone atop two upright walls.
This technique carried inherent limitations, as natural stone slabs rarely extended beyond 3 to 4 meters (10 to 13 feet) in span.
A more advanced means of spanning greater distances involved the corbel.
A corbel arch was formed by progressively cantilevering one stone over the next from the tops of two opposing walls, ultimately meeting at a point of convergence in the center, where it was securely locked into place by a capstone.
The advent of metal tools dramatically enhanced the precision and refinement achievable in stonework.
The specialized skill and theoretical knowledge required for cutting and designing stone led to the emergence of a distinct class of builders known as Masons.
III. Megaliths and Stone Circles: Building as Memory
A. Menhirs, Dolmens, and Cairns: To Honor the Dead
The intrinsic human need to commemorate the deceased served as the impetus for the earliest known monument designs.
Megaliths—large stones laboriously transported across the landscape and erected as markers—persisted as iconic reminders for remembering the lives of ancestors.
These megalithic markers have been discovered on all continents and were particularly prevalent during the period from 4000 to 1000 BCE.
Menhirs (meaning "raised stone") specifically appeared in northwestern France, in the region of Brittany.
Kerlesan, another field of megaliths at Carnac, features several hundred menhirs meticulously arranged in a fanning series of lines. While these grand stones initially functioned as burial markers, their purpose gradually evolved to become components of an astronomical observatory.
In stark contrast to the open nature of free-standing menhirs, Neolithic builders also created enclosed, cave-like spaces for their tombs. The fundamental type of these tombs was the dolmen.
Cairns were massive mounds constructed from stone and earth, often serving as burial sites.
Newgrange represents the grandest of more than 150 such cairns found in Ireland.
Artisans meticulously lined the interior passage of Newgrange with a series of dolmen-like megaliths.
B. Malta: The Roundness of Architecture
The prehistoric communities inhabiting the Maltese islands, situated 90 km (56 miles) south of Sicily, produced an extraordinary collection of enclosed megalithic temples, constructed between 3600 and 2500 BCE.
All 23 temples found on the Maltese islands adhere to a singular design concept, exemplified by the complex of Hagar Qim.
These temples consistently featured a pair of rounded apses, which over time were multiplied within the design.
The curving cells of the temples were encircled by a layer of thick walls, which were carefully lined with megaliths.
The primary entry point was oriented toward the rising sun, and a meticulously articulated threshold marked the transition into the sacred space.
The designers conceived of the temple primarily as a place of assembly for the community.
The distinctive curving apses of Maltese temples appear to have drawn inspiration from the monumental underground cemetery, or Hypogeum, located at Hal Saflieni.
C. Stonehenge: Responding to the Order of the Cosmos
Stonehenge stands as the most renowned prehistoric monument in Europe.
Its ultimate form showcases a superior level of craftsmanship, geometric precision, and advanced astronomical knowledge.
Stonehenge underwent at least five significant phases of construction over a period spanning nearly two millennia.
A first generation of builders constructed the outer ring and ditch.
Approximately 500 years later, a different team of builders added the features known as the Aubrey holes.
Around 2200 BCE, new builders removed the timber columns that had been in the Aubrey holes, subsequently reusing these holes to inter the ashes of their cremated dead.
A fourth major construction campaign occurred two centuries later, when the original bluestones were replaced by thirty substantial sandstone piers, commonly referred to as “sarsens.”
Sometime around 1600 BCE, a millennium after the initial megaliths were first delivered, the bluestones were reintroduced into the design. The new builders arranged a ring of these smaller stones inside the trilithons and a circle of them outside the sarsens, thereby considerably increasing the overall complexity of the composition.
The profound meaning of Stonehenge resided not merely in its physical structure but in the ritual life that humanized this grand "calendar of stone and earth" set within the open landscape.
Castlerigg, an earlier stone ring dating from 3200 BCE, provides an excellent example of the precedents that influenced the design of Stonehenge.
Avebury, situated north of Stonehenge, hosted the largest of the stone circles found in Britain.