Place to Live

A Place to Live

People must have shelter to survive. They will die without protection from the sun, rain, wind and cold. Today, people can live in almost every part of the world because they have learned to build walls and to put a roof over their heads. For centuries, people had no tools to cut or move trees and large stones, so the first houses were built from materials that were hard rocks with sharp edges could cut trees and other rocks, and these became the first building tools. Many centuries later, people melted metals from rocks to make stronger, sharper tools. In places with little stone or wood, people made sun-dried bricks out of mud to build their houses. Some of the earliest cultures in history were the first to discover and use many of the basic building materials still used today.

Did you know?

The basic methods used to support the roofs of many great buildings were first developed in ancient villages to hold up the roofs of huts.

The Roof

A waterproof roof is made from grass by thatching. Bundles of swamp grass are tied to a wooden frame so that each bundle overlaps the ones next yo it and below it.

Stone Hut

Walls of stone shaped with tools surround clusters of houses in many ancient villages. Each house has several rooms and each room has its own dome. Some even have a second story. Smoke from fires used for cooking escapes through holes in the roof.

A perfect place to live. Photo by Elena.

Making Bricks

Sun-dried mud bricks were perhaps the first synthetic building material ever made. A mixture of mud and straw is pressed into molds then laid out in the sun to dry. The straw holds the bricks together so they do not crumble. As rain will dissolve sun-dried bricks, a coating of lime is added or a wide roof is built to protect the walls.

Beehive Hut

A hut on Dingle Peninsula in Ireland looks like a beehive. It was built centuries ago. It was built centuries ago by a monk who piled up small flat stones cleared from his fields. He stacked each circle of stones on top of the circle below and made each stone slope downwards slightly towards the outside, so rain could not get in (as well in the village of Haaran on the Turkish-Syrian border).

The Walls

A man in weaving mats from palm fronds or leaves, which will become the walls of his hut. Weaving stiffens the fronds.

South Pacific Woven Huts

On the Trobriand Island of Papua New Guinea, houses are still built from small trees cut with stone tools. The pieces of wood are tied together with vines to form the frame of each house. The island people use plant material to complete the house. Grass and leaves vend easily and people thought they seemed too weak to use for building until they discovered how hard it was to pull them apart.