• The success of the human race was largely due to the development of tools – made
INFLUENCES
HISTORY
Pre-history and History
• The term "prehistory" was coined by French scholars, referring to the time before people
recorded history in writing.
• This is the longest period in the past of modern man (homo sapiens) that lasted about
400,000 years.
• History is the period of recorded events of man. History refers to the time after invention
of
writing. The history of the world is the memory of the past experience of Homo sapiens
around the world, as that experience has been preserved, largely in written records.
• Direct human ancestors evolved in Africa from 2.3 million years ago - Homo habilis,
Homo erectus, homo sapiens
of stone, wood, bone
• Humans spread from Africa into Southern Europe, Asia
• Could not settle far north due to the cold climate
• From Siberia by foot into North America
• From Southeast Asia by boat into Australia
• Before 9000 BC, nomadic life of hunting & food gathering
• By 9000 BC, farming and agriculture was practiced
• Fertile soil and plentiful food
• Animal domestication for work, milk, wool
• People wanted to settle down, live in communities
• First villages in the Middle East, South America, Central America, India and China
RELIGION
• No organized religion
• The dead are treated with respect - burial rituals and monuments
 •Burial of dead
•Belief in a spiritual world
•Creation of cave paintings

Paleolithic Dwellings

Lower Paleolithic Terra Amata, France

Upper Paleolithic Cro-Magnon, Ukraine

The Prehistoric age is divided into:

1. Stone Age – 2.5 million – 3000 BC

2. Bronze Age: 3000 BC – 900 BC
Upper Paleolithic Cro-Magnon, Ukraine
3. Iron Age: Started from 12th – 9th century BC

The Stone Age is divided into:

1. Paleolithic: 2.5 million – 10000 BC

2. Mesolithic: 30000 BC – 9000 BC
3. Neolithic: 9000 BC – 3000 BC

There were mainly 3 types of primitive dwellings:

1) Caves – or rocks for those occupied in hunting or fishing
2) Huts – for agriculture
3) Tent – for those such as shepherds who led a pastoral and nomadic life

Paleolithic and Mesolithic Age

• Hunters and gatherers
•Nomadic Mesolithic
•Simple tools and weapons dwellings
•Use of fire
•Spoken language
 2. Settlements made up of numbers of small detached
Neolithic Age
• work as farmers 3. Material used mainly timber frames and animal hides, developed to use mud
•Live in permanent villages bricks and stone in some cases
•Use domesticated plants and animals
•Large villages
•Increased status for males
•Warriors assert power over others
•More personal possessions
•New technologies

Early Civilization (3,000 BC)

• priests and nobles
•Merchants and artisans
•Peasants
•Slaves
•Rise of cities
•Organized governments
•Job specification
•Growth of social disease
•System of writing
•Trade
•Complex religion
The oldest and largest Neolithic city found
During the years from Paleolithic towards Neolithic the patterns of human activities - 8000 residents
changes: - Formed an agriculture and trade center connected with northern volcanic area to the
- Permanent settlement fertile crescent of Palestine and Mesopotamia
- Development of agriculture
- Change in temperature led to change in architecture -Tightly clustered rectangular houses with occasional courtyards
mean that: - No streets
- People changed in how they think and care about each other - Houses entries were by hole in the roof
- People wish to live together - Houses built from timber frames and wall of mud brick, plastered and sometimes painted
- Social organizations became more complex
Neolithic Architecture Character The remains of the Stone Age can be classified into:
1. The packed clay walls of earlier times were replaced by those constructed of
prefabricated units: mud bricks. This represented a major conceptual change from A. Funerary Architecture
the free forms of packed clay to the geometric modulation imposed by the
rectangular brick, and the building plans too became strictly rectangular Megalithic Structures - from the Greek mega; great, and lithos; Stone
1. Monoliths or Menhirs : 3. Dolmens
• A prehistoric monument consisting of an upright megalith, usually standing alone - Roof tomb structures, simple chambers of stone slabs covered with cap-stone
but sometimes aligned with others. - Celtic word means table stones
• their size can vary considerably, but their shape is generally uneven and squared, - A prehistoric monument consisting of two or more large upright stones supporting
often tapering towards the top. a horizontal stone slab, found esp. in Britain and France and usually regarded as a
• menhirs are widely distributed across Europe, Africa, and Asia but are most tomb.
numerous in Western Europe: particularly in Ireland, Great Britain and Brittany.
• they were constructed during different periods across pre –history as part of a
larger megalithic culture that flourished in Europe and beyond.
• the major function of Menhirs have variously been thought to have been used by
Druids for human sacrifice, used as territorial markers or elements of a complex
ideological system, or functioned as early calenders.

Menhir at Carnac, Brittany – 63 feet high, 14 feet in diameter and weighing 260 tons

2. Dysse
 Small closed stone chambers
4. Passage grave
- A clearly distinguishable
passage led to a circular of
polygonal inner chamber.
- 79-85m diameter, with
19m length passage ends
with domed inner chamber
- The tomb oriented to the
southeast
- The wall of the passage
built with stones added
each year on the morning of
the winter solstice
- Aligned in a way that a
 beam of light penetrate all the way to the back of the passage once a year on that - Lay under a grass covered mound overlaying a core of boulders
day
When completed, it was sealed at the entrance leaving narrows slit open at the
tops, this opening worked as a ‘channel of communication between the living and
the dead’

- Eastern entrance, with long burial chamber

- A semicircular space behind the entrance on which the burial chamber opened
- The central gallery led to 2 pairs of chambers

6. Cairn - A heap of stones piled up as a monument, tombstone, or landmark.

7. Tumulus - An artificial mound or earth or stone, esp. over an ancient grave.

5. Long barrow grave

- Rectangular or trapezoidal mounds, with an entrance leading to a large oblong
chambers

West Kennet, England (2000 BC)

B. Non-Funerary Architecture

While one or two individuals were capable of building a wood framed and hide-
covered house in a couple of days, a stone structure required more labor, attention
and time:
- Specialized workers to quarry massive stones
- Transporting the stone to building site
- Construction would take months, years, or decades

Cromlech : A circular arrangement of megaliths enclosing a dolmen or burial

mound.

There are three types of henges :

1. Henge - The word henge refers to a particular type of earthwork of the Neolithic
period,
typically consisting of a roughly circular or oval-shaped bank with an internal ditch
surrounding a central flat area of more than 20 m in diameter.
There is typically little if any evidence of occupation in a henge, although they may
contain ritual structures such as stone circles, timber circles and coves.

2. Hengiform monument ( diameter ≤ 20 m). Like an ordinary henge except the central
flat area is between 5 and 20 m in diameter, they comprise a modest earthwork
with a fairly wide outer bank. Mini henge or Dorchester henge are sometimes used
as synonyms for hengiform monument.

3. Henge enclosure (> 300 m). A Neolithic ring earthwork with the ditch inside the
bank, with the central flat area having abundant evidence of occupation and usually
being more than 300 m in diameter. Some true henges are as large as towns, but
lack evidence of domestic occupation. Super henge is sometimes used as a synonym Nabta Playa, Egypt (4800 - 4000 BC)
for a henge enclosure. However, sometimes Super henge is used to indicate size
alone rather than use.

Nabta Playa, Egypt
- Sun and star observatory
- Broken stone, some laid flat and other set vertical
- Two pairs of vertical stone lines, one pair aligned with the true north, the second
pair arranged towards the summer solstice horizon
Stonehenge, England (3000-1500 BC)
• Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England.
•Archaeologists believe it was constructed from 3000 BC to 2000 BC.
• Begun as a simple earthwork enclosure, it was built in several stages, with the
unique linteled
stone circle being erected in the late Neolithic period around 2500 BC.
•Stonehenge remained important into the early Bronze Age, when many burial
mounds were
built nearby.
•Two types of stone are used at Stonehenge – the larger sarsens and the smaller
“bluestone”.
•The sarsens were erected in 2 concentric arrangements – an inner horseshoe and
an outer
circle – and the bluestones were set up between them in a double arc.
•Probably at the same time the stone were being set up in the center of the
monument, the
sarsens close to the entrance were raised, together with the four station stones on
the periphery.
•About 200 or 300 years later the central bluestones were re-arranged to form a
circle and
inner oval.
•The posts measured 4.1 mts high, 2.1 mts wide and 1.1 mts thick
•They were surmounted by 6 to 7 ton lintels that formed a continuous circle around
the top.
The Stonehenge was built in 3 major stages over a period or more than 1200 years
1. Marking out the location (3100-3050 BC):
- a rope fixed to a central stake used to draw a circle (97.5m diameter) making a
ditch
- Two parallel entry stones on the northeast of the circle
- Inner circle of 56 holes

2. The second phase (2100-2075 BC)

- Crescent of 80 bluestone pillars were erected inside the circle to form what was to
be two concentric circles, and aligned with two others outside the entrance

3. The third phase (2000-1500 BC)

- Sandstone raised to form a circular colonnade (up to 9m high) closing the
horseshoe
- About 20 bluestone were erected in an approximate oval setting within the
sandstone horseshoe.
Construction Methods Around 1100 workers over a period of seven weeks needed Building Stonehenge required detailed social organization and cooperation of a high
to move each individual stone (from 380 km) order over and extended period.

What was it for?

The Stonehenge was used as astronomical observatory
- The alignment of the heelstone with the stones in the center is done for the
summer solstice, the sun would have risen directly over the heelstone
- Other alignments suggested that it had been used to mark the phases of the
eclipses of the moon

It was a tribal expression of identity

worked as a gathering place where each year the recurring cycle of the sun and of
life was celebrated by people

Other Remains:
Cove – Three standing stones, two on the sides and one at the back.
Trilithon – A structure consisting of two upright stones supporting a horizontal Corbeled vault of the main chamber in the passage grave, Newgrange, Ireland, ca.
lintel. 3200-2500 BCE

post and lintel - one of the earliest methods of architectural construction in which
two posts (sometimes called “uprights”) support a lintel (horizontal beam which
rests across the top)

The lintels (horizontal monoliths)

were fitted to one another using a
woodworking method, the
“tongue-and-groove joint”

Great stone tower built into the settlement wall, Jericho, ca. 8000-7000 BCE

Jericho was protected by 5-foot-thick walls and at least one stone tower 30 feet
high and 33 feet in diameter. An outstanding achievement that marks the beginning
of monumental architecture.

Method of Construction:
Aerial view of ruins of Hagar
Corbeled vault - a vault formed
Qim, Malta, ca. 3200- 2500
by the piling of stone blocks in
BCE
horizontal courses, cantilevered
inward until the two walls meet
in an arch.
One of the earliest stone
temples in the world is on the
island of Malta. The 5,000-
 year-old structure is remarkably sophisticated for its date, especially in the
combination of rectilinear and curved forms.

Other Forms of Primitive Dwellings

• Mostly had one room

• The development of more complex civilizations led to division of the room into
smaller ones for eating, sleeping, socializing
• In places where no industrial revolution has occurred to transform building
methods and increase population density, houses show little difference from
primitive ones

Wigwam or Tepee
• conical tent with wooden poles as framework
• Covered with rush mats and an animal skin door
Hogan - primitive Indian structure of joined logs

Beehive Hut
Trullo - dry walled rough stone shelter with corbelled roof

Igloo - Innuit (Eskimo) house constructed of hard-packed snow blocks built up spirally
Nigerian hut - with mud walls and roof of palm leaves
Iraqi mudhif - covered with split reed mats, built on a reed platform to prevent settlement
Sumatran house - for several families, built of timber and palm leaves, the fenced pen
underneath is for livestock