PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURETHE BEGINNINGS OF ARCHITECTURE

INTRODUCTION

Architecture is an ancient and necessary art, for people have always sought shelter from theelements, and
thus the beginnings of architecture are part of prehistory, the period before thedevelopment of written
language.

PREHISTORY begins as early as 35,000 BC and extends to about 3,000 BC in the lands of theeastern
Mediterranean and until well after 2000 BC in parts of Western Europe.PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENTS
AND MEGALITHIC CONSTRUCTIONEASTERN EUROPE

Human settlement seems to have originated at the SMALL CLAN or FAMILY LEVEL, with asufficient
number of people living together to provide mutual assistance in hunting and foodgathering and joint
protection against enemies.

Among the earliest huts to be discovered are those at sites in the central Russian Plain (Ukraine)dated to
about 14000 BC. Constructed of mammoth bones and pine poles, with a lining of animal skins and a
central hearth, the largest dome-shaped hut incorporated skeleton partsfrom nearly a hundred mammoths
in its framework.

Excavations of town sites suggest that larger communities were a much later development. Theexistence
of human settlements depends on an agricultural surplus that enables some people toassume specialized
roles (priest, ruler, merchant, craftworker), not directly tied to theproduction of food.

Two of the earliest known urban communities were JERICHO, Israel (ca. 8000 BC) and thetrading town
of CATAL HUYUK (6500-5700 BC), in Anatolia, part of present-day Turkey.EASTERN EUROPE

JERICHO was a fortified settlement, with a stone wall up to 27 feet thick enclosing an area of about 10
acres.

Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (8350

7370 BCE); The site is a 40,000 square metre settlementsurrounded by a stone wall, with a stone tower in
the centre of one wall. This is so far theoldest wall ever to be discovered, thus suggesting some kind of
social organization.

The town contained round mud-brick houses, yet no street planning.

The identity and numberof the inhabitants (some sources say 2000

3000 dwellers) of Jericho during the PPN A period isstill under debate.


It is known that they had domesticated emmer wheat, barley and pulses and hunted wildanimals.

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, 7220 BCE to 5850 BCE .

Expanded range of domesticated plants.

Possible domestication of sheep.

Apparent cult involving the preservation of human skulls, with facial features reconstructedfrom plaster
and eyes set with shells in some cases.

The architecture consisted of rectilinear buildings made of mudbricks on stone foundations.

Themudbricks were loaf-shaped with deep thumb prints to facilitate bounding.

No building has been excavated in its entirety. Normally, several rooms cluster around a centralcourtyard.
There is one big room (6.5 m 4 m) and (7 m 3 m) with internal divisions, the restare small,
presumably used for storage.

The Middle Bronze Age is perhaps the most prosperous in the whole history of Kna'an. Thedefenses
belong to a fairly advanced date in that period
and there was a massive stonerevetment, part of a complex system of defenses.

Bronze-age Jericho fell in the 16th century at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, the calibratedcarbon
remains from its City-IV destruction layer dating to at least 100 BCE.CATAL HUYUK

Although CATAL HUYUK appears to have been unfortified, the town was a dense package of dwellings
without streets.

No footpaths or streets were used between the dwellings, which were clustered in ahoneycomb-like maze.
Most were accessed by holes in the ceiling, which were reached byinterior and exterior ladders and stairs.

Thus, the rooftops were used as streets. The ceiling openings also served as the only source of ventilation,
letting in fresh air and allowing smoke from open hearths and ovens to escape.

Mud-brick walls and a post-and-lintel timber framework enclosed rectangular spaces thatabutted the
neighboring houses so that together they established a perimeter town wall.

Houses had plaster interiors characterized by squared off timber ladders or steep stairs, usuallyplaced on
the south wall of the room, as were cooking hearths and ovens.

Each main room served as an area for cooking and daily activities. The main rooms containedraised
platforms that may have been used for a range of domestic activities.

All interior walls and platforms were plastered to a smooth finish.

Ancillary rooms were used asstorage, and were accessed through low entry openings from main rooms.

Interspersed with the houses were windowless shrines containing decorative motifs of bulls andand cult
statuettes of deities.

The settlement at Catal Huyuk is the precursor of more sophisticated communities thatdeveloped in the
fertile valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers at the beginning of the fourthmillennium.
PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTUREWestern EuropeINTRODUCTION

In Western Europe, the transition to urban communities was slower in coming, although theshift from
hunting-and-gathering societies to larger agricultural groups under the direction of apriest-king was
similar to the experience of societies on the eastern rim of the MediterraneanSea.
MEGALITHIC ARCHITECTURE
MEGALITHS (Greek,
megas
, large, and
lithos
, stone) are prehistoric structures built of massive
stones, usually for religious or funerary purposes.Four principal types of megaliths can be distinguished:
STANDING STONES, ROW ALIGNMENTS, STONECIRCLES, AND BURIAL CHAMBERS.A.
STANDING STONES and ROW ALIGNMENTSIsolated stones, or MENHIRS, are found in scattered
sites throughout western and northernEurope and are common in Brittany. The larger examples are
probably prehistoric. Some of thesmaller ones have been erected in recent times as rubbing stones for
cattle.

Ancient stone alignments range from simple pairs of stones to complex arrays of multiple rowsextending
over a long distance, as at Carnac in Brittany. Some of them may have had anastronomical significance;
others, such as the STONE AVENUE at Avebury, England, appear to bea processional way leading to a
prehistoric sanctuary.B.

STONE CIRCLESNumerous circles or near-circular rings of standing stones exist, mainly in the British
Isles. About1/3 of these appear to have been laid out deliberately in noncircular shapes such as
ellipses,flattened circles, and egg-shaped circles; these may have been designed to achieve a
wholenumber ratio between the perimeter and principal diameter of the formation.

This suggests the use of a common measurement, the so-called MEGALITHIC YARD, 0.829m or2.72 ft.
This then implies a knowledge in prehistoric Europe of mensuration and geometry at a