Go to the beehive huts. These incredible buildings, some of which are over 1400 years old, are erected using the corbelling technique, a style that dates back to the Neolithic tomb at Newgrange in County Meath (made around 6000 years ago), where this architectural style was also used. The beehive hut has two levels. The upper level is an open-sided gallery with walls made from wooden beams and covered with clay or mud bricks. The lower level is where the family lived, consisting mainly of rooms for sleeping and eating. There might also have been a common area with a fire pit for cooking food.
They were usually built near settlements or farmlands because they were useful for shelter during storms or heat waves. The people who lived in them went to great lengths to make sure they were well built and would last for many years.
In time, these simple dwellings became more complex, especially after 1700 AD. Then, instead of just one room on each floor, there were often several rooms, some as large as 20m² (215ft²). These multiroomed houses had lofts above them for storing hay and grain, and sometimes even animals. They also had outside toilets connected to ponds or streams for cleaning afterwards.
The people who lived in them were often farmers who needed a safe place to store their crops when they were not using them.
A beehive house is a prehistoric style of home built by widening a basic stone hemisphere made of individual blocks to offer more height in the center; the shape resembles a straw beehive, thus the name. The houses were first developed in Europe but also appeared in North America.
They were typically 2-4 meters in diameter and had a flat floor covered with grass or gravel. The walls were made of mud or daub (a mixture of clay and straw) that was packed around the base of the stone wall supporting it from within. The roof was usually made of wood, although some may have been thatched.
The houses would have served as both shelter and storage for food crops such as wheat, barley, and peas. They could also contain nests for bees, which would have provided honey and wax for fuel and medicine.
People would have lived in a beehive hut until about 500 years ago when metal tools were invented. Before then, they probably used sharp sticks or stones to build their homes.
The beehive house has many advantages over other types of dwellings. It is inexpensive to construct and easy to maintain. The bees don't go away when the winter comes and the roof doesn't need repairing like a wooden building does. There's no worry about mice or rats eating through the grain of the wood or causing fires.
Archaic humans built their dwellings by balancing poles around a shallow hole excavated into the earth. The poles were then covered with bush and mud. Fire hearths and storage pits are frequently discovered both inside and outside ancient buildings by archaeologists. During the Archaic period, some dwellings were erected in open regions. Others may have been subtropical or tropical forest dwellings.
By the Neolithic period, humans had developed farming as a way of life. They cleared areas of land for cultivation and built agricultural villages to house themselves and their animals. These early farmers also used stone tools to work their lands and build their houses. They kept livestock such as cows, sheep, and pigs and raised crops such as wheat, barley, peas, lentils, and beans. Archaeologists have found evidence of watermelon, cotton, olives, and grapes being grown by ancient farmers.
In the Bronze Age, people began to make weapons out of metal. Some scholars believe this was a cause for human expansion because they needed more space to farm since they no longer needed to protect their crops from wild animals. Other scholars believe that humans continued to expand their territory by moving westward toward Europe and Asia.
During the Iron Age, humans were using iron tools and weapons. They built cities and invaded countries with armies. At the end of the Iron Age, humans were still living in cities and building shelters even though metals are harder to come by than stones or wood.
The constructions here date back around 6000 years, while evidence suggests that they were reused later throughout the bronze and iron ages. Around 30 of these sites have been found in Ireland.
They are often called "spirit houses" because of this similarity in shape to modern churches. These ancient sites are thought to have had some form of ritual purpose for their builders - perhaps used as meeting places or as sacrificial sites. Some researchers believe they may even be linked to lunar cycles or solar events.
Stone circles are common all over Europe and many other parts of the world too. They're such a widespread feature of our landscape that it's hard not to notice them!
There are several theories about why people built them. Some think they were just decorative sights or markers on roadsides. Others believe they were used in rituals or ceremonies. Still others think they were used as tombs. However, none of these theories has been proven completely. It's also possible that people didn't build them but left them as they found them and only started thinking about them as mysteries.
Until fairly recently, most of them were lost due to wind and water.
Nine thousand years ago, Neolithic people lived in densely packed mud-brick dwellings. According to the New York Times, "each house was uniform and rectangular, and entered by holes in the ceiling rather than front doors." They were basic constructions with every contemporary convenience—a fire, an oven, and sleeping platforms. But they didn't have any windows or indoor plumbing.
Houses like these would have been built from the local materials available to early farmers, after all wood is used for most tools and weapons. There might also be a few stones taken from nearby sites. But mostly the components of the house were harvested from their own yard or village site. When the house was destroyed by fire, it was quickly rebuilt using the same materials. Over time, several buildings could be joined together to form a settlement.
People started building more permanent houses about 9500 B.C. These were made out of stone and had better ventilation and insulation than their mud-brick predecessors. They also had larger rooms and were located away from the village center.
About 3500 B.C., people began to build large cities where many thousands of people lived side by side. The first cities appeared around 15000 B.C. in Egypt and Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). They were mainly composed of households living in rectangular blocks of land they owned or rented. However, over time the households became businesses that employed workers who built more sophisticated cities.
Copyright © 2020 - 2023 BindleyHardware & Co Inc.
