History of Architecture 1- Prehistoric Architecture| FRAMED Architecture

Hello and welcome to Framed Architecture. In this episode, we are going to start off a series of investigating and exploring the history of architecture. In this video specifically, we will learn about the prehistoric times and prehistoric architecture, which is the first stage of the history of architecture. The prehistoric times is a that started from approximately 11,600 BC till 3500 BC and it mainly passes by the old stone age Paleolithic, the middle stone age Mesolithic and the new stone age Neolithic and some people consider it to also pass by the Iron and Bronze Ages too. The characteristics of prehistoric architecture are structures based on geometric patterns and also it can include monumental structures such as cliff dwellings, stonehenge, mud structures and the thatch. To start off with the first monumental prehistoric structure, the cliff dwelling. A dwelling is a self-contained unit of accommodation used by one or more households as a home and thus a cliff dwelling is a dwelling formed by using niches or cars and high cliffs with more or less excavation or with additions in the way of masonry. Two special types of cliff dwellings were distinguished by archaeologists. The first is a cliff house, which is actually built on levels in the cliff and then the cabin, which is dug out by using natural recesses or openings and a famous example of cliff dwelling is the cliff palace, which is the largest cliff dwelling in North America specifically found in southwest the southwestern corner of Colorado and this is a structure that was built by the ancestral Pueblo and it's located in the Netherbird National Park where it was their former homeland region. The second prehistoric monumental structure is the stonehenge and it's a prehistoric monument found in winter England and it consists of a ring of standing stones each around four meters high and 2.1 meters wide and weighing around 25 tons and the stonehenge is a very famous monumental site that was built by the Druids for a to host sacrificial ceremony and there's also a very similar monumental structure to the stonehenge which is the Yebeklitepe and it's found in the southeastern part of Anatolia in Turkey and this monumental structure was a temple that was built to worship the dog star Sirius. That's its name and it's considered one of the oldest temples in history. The third type of prehistoric structures are mud structures and the coarse mud construction was one of the oldest approaches to building walls and most mud was formed by the hand and used to build the walls and then left to dry and other layers would then be added to the walls to make to add support and each layer would dry and then another layer would be added and one of the most known mud structures is the ancient town of Nijani found in Mali and it's a city that was based on an old mud town that was created in the 3rd century BC and it has an outstanding mosque of great monumental and religious value and this town is renowned for its civic construction and the fact that it has a lot of buttresses as well as the elegant monumental houses with intricate settings and the fourth and final type of prehistoric structures is a thatch and a thatch is a name given for a roof covering of straw, reed, palm leaves and similar material. A famous thatch house is called an Apache which is a tradition in accommodation space that dome-shaped structure and sometimes was called a wikia and it's usually built out of oak or willow poles that are driven into the ground or tied together with strands of yappa and covered with brush usually bare grass and this house or accommodation space or dwelling was built was usually built in a few days or a couple of days and would last a few months and that's because the natives who built the thatch usually moved around the area which is now the southwestern United States and so they did not need to have a permanent home and that's why they made it out of a thatch. Looking at the prehistoric structures which were mainly created for accommodation spaces, for housing and religious samples, one can deduce that the main reason people used architecture was for living in a safe place and also to find a place to worship the god and these are both reasons for survival as a person needs a safe space to survive which is a home and they need a faith to keep them surviving which is a religion or a faith and that's why architecture has allowed people from prehistoric times to survive until we have reached modern architecture. Thank you for listening and I'll see you in the next episode of the history of architecture.