The Earliest Human (Huts) Settlements
The Stone Age Huts
In the beginning, humans were entirely preoccupied with the need to find food. Hunting animals and gathering fruit and grains was their means of survival. Their settlements were semi-permanent homes, functioning almost like a base camp, from which the tribes set forth to hunt and forage.
Archaeologists have found evidence of huts built on the Central Russian Plain. These human shelters were organized into settlements, some dating as far back as 14,000 B.C.E. Among the creatures these humans hunted were mammoths, ten-foot-tall hairy elephants.
They hunted the mammoths for food, but they also used their carcasses for other things like starting fires, manufacturing tools, and constructing huts. The hunters fashioned the bones into a dome, then filled any gaps between the bones with moss and shrubs before covering the whole structure with turf or a mammoth hide.
This enterprise required a tremendous amount of resources; depending on the size of the hut, it could take as many as ninety-five mammoths to build a single structure. In fact, scientists are still not sure if the mammoths became extinct because of climate change or whether overhunting had something to do with it.
The largest huts were elaborate enough to include multiple hearths on the inside and openings in the top from which smoke could escape.
Features of the Earliest Huts
- Mammoth bones
- Pine poles
- Animal skin linings
- Central hearth
Jericho
Urban civilizations began appearing much later, around 8000 B.C.E., when crop cultivation had begun to produce enough food that people did not have to move around so much. Now not everyone concerned themselves with food collection and production.
People separated into other specialties such as warriors and priests. Humans began settling into permanent spaces and these early farming communities grew into villages often five or ten times bigger than the nomadic hunting settlements before them.
 |
| Jericho was one of these communities. Jericho was a fortified settlement positioned on the West Bank. Originally built in 8000–7000 B.C.E., it was enclosed and protected by a thick stone wall, in places as high as twelve feet, as well as a ditch. A tower about thirty feet rose over the area. The entire city stretched across some ten acres. |
The Power of Mud
The earliest dwellings in Jericho, inhabited by hunters and farmers, were mud huts. Mud brick was the preferred building material in this area for thousands of years. It was easy to work with and manufactured from materials that were cheap and widely available. Builders mixed mud and water together with a binder such as reeds or straw and molded them into rectangles. They then set the bricks out in the sun to bake until they were dry. After the bricks were stacked into the desired shape, the walls of the mud brick houses were plastered and painted.
Honoring the Dead
The early civilizations thought constantly about their ancestors. Even the way they built their homes emphasized this part of their culture.
They often buried their dead family members beneath the floors of their homes. In the days immediately following the death, they would decorate makeshift shrines to the deceased in their homes with vibrant wall paintings or carvings. The subject of these paintings, like prehistoric cave paintings, was often hunting scenes, wild animal motifs, and cattle.
To create these paintings, they would cover the wall with white plaster, almost like a blank canvas. Then they would use pigments bound with fats to make colorful paints.
After the grieving period ended, the family would paint over these shrines. In some areas the skeletons of the dead were decorated.
Sometimes the bodies were covered with red ocher or the necks and heads were painted with blue and green pigments. They were often buried with jewelry and weapons.
JerichoSkulls
One of the fascinating artifacts archaeologists uncovered from the ancient site at Jericho were skull “portraits.” These were sculptural renderings of a dead person’s likeness that were placed over his detached skull.
These plastered skulls underscore just how important the dead were to the people of Jericho. They were an art form dedicated to preserving the memory of one who had passed on.
Çatal Hüyük
Çatal Hüyük (c. 6500–5700 B.C.E.) was situated in Anatolia, part of presentday Turkey. It was a highly sophisticated prehistoric city that sat fifty-seven feet above the plain and stretched out over thirty-two acres. Archaeologists have uncovered more than a dozen levels to this Çatal Hüyük settlement, which indicates that it was likely inhabited for thousands of years.
They also found evidence of a wellestablished trading network, agricultural system, and stoneware and ceramics production. More than 1,000 Çatal Hüyük houses made of mud brick and wood were constructed here.
There were no streets or outer stone wall like the one built around Jericho. Instead, the houses were densely packed and nestled right next to each other, leaving no gaps. This side-by-side layout of houses formed the perimeter defense wall.
The walls of these houses were made of mud bricks and, since they rested right against each other and the sides were not reachable, each house could only be accessed by the roof. The roofs were held up with heavy wood timbers.
These in turn supported smaller timbers covered by reeds and mud. There were also high, small openings in the walls for ventilation.
Residents would climb over the rooftops and enter their house by a ladder that went through an opening in the roof. Each house included a main room with raised areas for sitting, preparing food, and sleeping.
Many houses also included an oven or hearth, possibly one in the middle of each room, for baking bread and making pottery. A ventilation shaft situated in the ceiling allowed smoke from the ovens and hearths to escape.
 |
| These homes were built with post-and-lintel construction. The houses were built over the ruins of older houses. Newer buildings were supported by the ones that came before them, raising the houses to different levels. This practice also created open spaces between houses, where citizens could burn their garbage. |
Interior room walls were lined with white plaster, and the beams that were used to hold up the roofs were painted red. Within these tight rows of houses were also shrines dedicated to the inhabitants’ deities.
These appeared sporadically in the layout, usually windowless and without ornamentation. They sometimes included statues and a simple decorative motif of bulls, symbols of one of the important gods worshipped in the city.
Post-and-Lintel Construction
This common building technology is found all over the ancient world. Vertical supports (posts) were set in the ground and a horizontal structure (lintel) was balanced on top. The posts support the lintel and its loads without crushing or buckling.
This method would later be central to ancient Greek architecture and is still used today for doorways set within walls. Eventually cities such as Çatal Hüyük were abandoned, possibly because they did not have room for the addition of public buildings. Once people began to establish governments and undertake civic initiatives, they would require more space and deliberate city planning.