Somalia

Laas Geel



Caves in red granite rock were used as shelter. People had cows, which they depicted in cave paintings. They also painted themselves, dogs, and other animals.

Tunisia

Matmata, an example of a two-level Berber house

Berbers carved houses in the rock. The living quarters were connected by corridors. Such an underground city was used by director George Lucas in "Star Wars".

Morocco

clay casbahs

They were defensive structures built of clay bricks dried in the sun and clay mixed with straw and stones. The ceilings in these buildings were wooden and reinforced with reeds. Later, residential buildings at the foot of fortresses were named kasbahs. Kasbahs of this type are built on a square plan with living and utility rooms centered around an internal courtyard, the atrium, with a fountain or well.

Mali

Djenne, Great Mosque

The houses in this city are built of clay on a wooden structure. The Great Mosque is renovated every year by all residents. The protruding wooden elements serve as scaffolding during the renovation of clay walls.

Egypt

Giza, pyramids

The world's largest stone pyramids are the tombs of pharaohs. They have a square base and are built of limestone rock blocks. The tallest one, the Khufu (Cheops) pyramid, is 147 meters high, 230 meters at its base, and was built in 2650 BC. The pyramid of Khafre, slightly lower, measures 137 m, and the pyramid of Mykerinos is 65 m high. About 2 million 300 thousand stone blocks were used to build the Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops), each weighing from 2.5 to 15 tons. The blocks are stacked on top of each other and reinforced with mortar, the composition of which has not been discovered to this day. The pyramids were covered with sanded limestone plates, called alabaster, and shone with the reflected sunlight.

Egypt

terracotta models of houses

The houses of the poorer people in Egypt were built of Nile river mud, papyrus and wood. They were usually single-story, but there were also two-story ones with external stairs leading to a terrace where people slept. Sometimes there was a wall around the houses.

Wooden model of a richer family house

The houses were built of dried clay bricks, had wooden ceilings and flat roofs, and were surrounded by a wall with one gate. Inside, apart from smaller courtyards, there was a garden with trees, and in the buildings, apart from the owners' living space, there were also rooms for servants, animals, and utility rooms.

Iraq

Kurdistan, City of Ur, archaeological site

At first, the peoples of the Euphrates and Tigris valleys lived in houses made of mud bricks, and the walls of the houses were made of reed braid covered with a layer of river mud, reeds and stones. Ancient Ur was built 5,000 BC. It was surrounded by a wall and inside were temples to the gods, priests' houses, a citadel*, royal tombs and residential quarters. The city was built of clay bricks dried in the sun. Ur was unearthed in the desert in the 19th century.

Iraq

Kurdistan, City of Ur

clay water pipes were sealed with natural asphalt

Yemen

Shibam, "Manhattan* of the desert"

Residential high-rise buildings built of clay on a wooden structure are up to 11 floors high and there are about 500 of them. Some of the surviving ones are 100, 200 and 400 years old!

Iran

Bam city

Built of clay 2,500 years ago, Bam was famous for the largest ancient fortress (defensive structure). The city was made of dried clay bricks. It was destroyed in 2003 by an earthquake and is being rebuilt by the Iranian government in cooperation with other countries.

India

Elura (Ellora), a complex of 34 temples

The buildings, carved out of rock 1,600 years ago, are covered with plaster - a mixture of hemp, gypsum, clay and lime. Such plaster kept the temples intact, providing the monks with a warm and cozy place. Nowadays, such plaster is called hemp concrete and is widely used.

China

Fujian province – tulou

Multi-story defensive buildings, called tulou, were built of compacted earth, with a wooden load-bearing and roof structure. The outer walls (about 2 m thick) have only small windows - shooting holes. Tulou were built by peoples fleeing the invasions of nomads in the north of China. They occupied lands already inhabited on the slopes of the mountains, where they were attacked by the natives. The structures constructed in this way ensured safety and the possibility of defense.

China

tulou – interior

The interior of tulou is a mini village. On the ground floor there were rooms for animals and carts, on the first floor there were warehouses, and the upper floors housed flats for many families. Up to 800 people lived in a tulou. There was a temple inside, sometimes a market, and there was one gate leading inside. Today some tulou are falling into disrepair, but many are inhabited or renovated and converted into hotels. They are a great tourist attraction.

Tibet

Lhasa, the palace of the Dalai Lama, known as Potala

Potala rises 90 m above the capital of Tibet, is 1.5 km long and spans an area of 41 hectares. It is 13 floors high. It was built with clay, stones and wood - without any nails!

The Arctic

igloo - "house of snow" built by the Inuit tribes

The entrance to the igloo was usually long, almost three meters long, and covered with skins. The dome was built of snow cubes 60 cm wide, 120 cm long and 20 cm thick. The building was sealed with snow and covered with hides. The igloo was a shelter during winter, tents were built from branches in summer and covered with animal skins.

North America

North American Indian Homes

Before Columbus came to America, the native tribes living there (there were about 300 of them) lived in simple tents and small houses. The supporting structure was usually made of branches arranged in a cone or dome, covered with hides, birch bark, grass or branches, which were sometimes covered with earth or clay. This is what teepee,

wigwams,

and wikiup looked like.

Hogans, small houses made of tree trunks, were sealed with clay and grass.

The long houses of the Iroquois were constructed with wooden pillars, the walls were made of boards, the roofs were pitched or semicircular, sealed with branches and birch bark. One or more families lived in long houses. These buildings were 20 to 100 meters long, inside there were wooden sleeping platforms and wooden floors. The long houses had no windows but only openings in the roof through which smoke from the fireplaces came out. Today they are built by modern Indians in open-air museums as places of meetings, education and traditional celebrations. Long houses have been made all over the world, now they can be found in Asia on the island of Borneo.

New Mexico, USA

Adobe brick buildings

Homes and farm buildings were built of bricks made of sun-dried Adobe clay. Such bricks were used where there was a shortage of wood and stone. Adobe was also made of clay or river mud, with added grass or straw to strengthen it. To this day, such bricks are used in the construction of houses, schools or hotels.

Mexico

Houses of Pueblo indians

In the half-dugout houses, the walls of the living quarters stuck out of the ground. The walls were made of clay with mixed in grass or straw.

Mexico

Palenque National Park, city of the Maya people from 7th-8th c.

The largest structures in the cities of Mesoamerica were stone step pyramids with temples on their tops. Crumbling cities and structures have been discovered in Central America. Cities were abandoned or slowly dying out because of climate change, invasions from the north, and lack of water.

Mexico

Teotihuacán

The city of Teotihuacán was founded in the 2nd century, in the central part of the present-day Mexico State. Its culture and customs influenced other cities. In the center there was a large square with stone pyramids of the Sun and Moon with temples. There were two main streets running from the square and smaller streets with residential buildings made of stone and wood. On the outskirts peasants lived in earthen houses made either of sun-dried bricks or of clay with straw, grasses, and reeds. The Teotihuacán culture was preceded by other peoples with their customs, buildings, beliefs: the Olmecs, Zapotecs, Mayans and Toltecs. All of these peoples lived in city-states. They were invaded by peoples from the north who took over their customs and then created their own.

Mexico

Tenochtitlan (Cactus Rock) – the capital of the Aztecs

The city was founded around 1325 on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco and on artificial floating islands. Bridges led to it. Drinking water was supplied from the nearby mountains by aqueducts. Floating gardens, palaces and a huge center with temples and a stepped pyramid were built in the city. The capital of the Aztecs was captured by the Spaniards in the 16th century and razed to the ground. They used the rubble to build the present Mexican capital - Mexico. Today, we can only see a model of the city's buildings and its painted view in a museum.

Guatemala

stone step pyramid in Tikal, a Mayan city

Peru

the famous Inca town at the top of a mountain Machu Picchu in the Andes

Incan residential buildings were built of rough stone and clay mortar. The doors and windows are shaped like a trapeze (the Incas didn’t know the arch vault) and the roofs were covered with straw.

Peru

the Inca city of Ollantaytambo, terraced buildings

Inca art developed in Ollantaytambo from the 11th century to the mid-16th century. It was created on the shores of Lake Titicaca, it covered the Bolivian plateau and the northern regions of Chile and Argentina. Like other peoples of the Americas, the Incas were invaded by Europeans.

France

Chauvet's cave

Lascaux Cave and the Chauvet Cave, decorated with beautiful rock paintings, are some of famous caves where human traces from thousands of years ago were discovered.

Spain

Altamira,

a rock painting of a bison from 20 thousand years ago

Italy

Sicily, habitable cave

Great Britain

West Stow, West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village

After the cave period, people lived in dugouts or small houses made of clay and wood. The shelters were dug in the ground, mostly covered with branches and undergrowth (moss), sometimes they had a clay oven. They have not survived to our times, now they are built in open-air museums for visitors.

Poland

model of the settlement in Biskupin

A model of a fortified settlement built around the 8th century BC on an island in Lake Biskupińskie. Wood and soil were used to build the settlement. There were about 106 10-meter-long houses in 11 rows. Many families lived in each house, with up to 1,000 people living in the whole village. Between the houses there were 2.5 m wide wood-lined streets. The settlement was surrounded by a wooden and earth embankment, 640 m long, 3 m wide and 6 m high, with an entrance gate. The stronghold was surrounded by a breakwater, 2 to 9 m wide, built of diagonally driven piles. After 150 years, the water level in the lake rose and the settlement was flooded so the people moved to another place. The remains were discovered in 1933.

Poland

settlement in Biskupin

view of a street with long houses

Greece

plan of a two-story residential building

The owners and servants lived in these houses. They were built of stone, because in a hot climate it kept the rooms cool. The ceilings were wooden. The houses were covered with baked ceramic tiles.

Greece

Athens, Acropolis limestone hill

The Acropolis is a complex of temples of ancient Greek gods. The buildings were made of stone, with carved columns and statues. All buildings were painted different colors, but over time the paint was washed away by rains. The remains of these decorations were discovered by archaeologists. The largest building was the Parthenon from the 5th century BC, dedicated to the goddess Athena.

Italy

Rome, Forum Romanum

The Roman Forum was a city square. It was the main political, religious, and social center of ancient Rome. The most important public ceremonies were held there. The Roman Forum was surrounded by stone temples that housed the head priest quarters and archive*. Construction began in the 8th century BC and over the centuries other squares and new buildings were added and named after the rulers of the time. Town buildings were built of stone and the homes of the poorer people in Rome were built of clay, wood and burnt bricks.

Italy

Rome, Coloseum, amphitheatre

Turkey

Side, Roman amphitheater

Romans conquered all the countries and peoples around the Mediterranean Sea, their magnificent stone buildings are in many countries in Europe, Asia and Africa around the Mediterranean: temples, agoras, colosseum, amphitheaters, aqueducts.

Spain

Catalonia, Roman aqueduct in Tarragona