PREHISTORIC

INFLUENCES:
HISTORY
Pre – historic Period
Paleolithic (20,00,000 BC) Neolithic (10,000 BC) Early Civilization (3,000 BC)

• Hunters and gatherers • work as farmers • priests and nobles

•Nomadic •Live in permanent villages •Merchants and artisans
•Simple tools and weapons •Use domesticated plants and •Peasants
•Use of fire animals •Slaves
•Spoken language •Large villages •Rise of cities
•Burial of dead •Increased status for males •Organized governments
•Belief in a spiritual world •Creation •Warriors assert power over others •Job specification
of cave paintings •More personal possessions •Growth of social disease
•New technologies •System of writing
•Trade
•Complex religion

• The success of the human race was largely due to the development of tools – made 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

• Some people needed not farm, so they spent time on other work - pot-making, metal-working,
art and… architecture!

RELIGION

• No organized religion
• The dead are treated with respect - burial rituals and monuments
ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER
MATERIALS
• Animal skins, wooden frames, animal bones

CONSTRUCTION SYSTEM
• Existing or excavated caves
• Megalithic, most evident in France, England and Ireland

DECORATION
• Caves paintings in Africa, France and Spain
Sculpture

EXAMPLES

MENHIR
• A single, large upright monolith

• Serves a religious purpose

• Sometimes arranged in parallel rows, reaching several miles

and consisting of thousands of stones

Carnac, France

DOLMEN
• Tomb of standing stones usually
capped with a large horizontal slab
 CROMLECH
• Enclosure formed by huge stones planted on
the ground in circular form

Stonehenge, England (2800 – 1500 BC)

• Most spectacular and imposing of monolithic monuments
• Outer ring, inner ring, innermost horseshoe-shaped ring with open end facing east
• Largest stones weigh 45 to 50 tons, came from Wales 200 km away
• Stones transported by sea or river then hauled on land with sledges and rollers by hundreds of
people, raised upright into pits, capped with lintels

Genuine architecture - it defines exterior space

• A solar observatory - designed to mark the sun's path during sunrise on Midsummer Day

TUMULUS or PASSAGE GRAVE

• Dominant tomb type
• Corridor inside leading to an underground chamber
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

Natural or Artificial Caves

Beehive Hut Trullo - dry walled rough stone shelter with corbelled roof
Wigwam or Tepee - conical tent with wooden poles as
framework

Hogan - primitive Indian structure of joined logs -

Covered with rush mats and an animal skin door

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