100% gratitude to the two of you, for all your knowledge and enthusiasm you share in such a beautifully sculpted posts. A very big hello laced with warm and kind thoughts to everybody that reads this comment.
As a computer scientist, I understood the importance of data - not only in quantity but accuracy - and I'm glad to see such techniques applied to archeology. There is so much data out there in what we would call "disjointed sets", that combining them in a way to gain new insights is quite exciting.
5:21 Thanks for giving us the slightly moistened version. Building codes bring to mind bureaucracy, which brings to mind cuneiform and the reason that so many samples of the writing remain.
I think a time bar at the bottom of your screen as a visual aid could be tremendously helpful. Just a simple, but bold lines ticked out horizontally, flashed briefly while discussing time periods; for beginners and for people who are more visual. Like I can imagine and place things more quickly into temporal context. Great job on the show.
Great pragmatic discussion. I'm sure the invention of pottery and mud bricks went hand in hand. Once a person gets familiar with a new material or process, they're going to think about more ways to use it.
Thank you @BronZeage! Actually, for whatever reason, pottery in this part of the world only came in at least 700 years after mud bricks - if the possible ceramics at Boncuklu Höyük are to be included in the equation. Otherwise it's another 1,000 years after that! Go figure.
When I was young, many many years ago, I was taught that this area was very quiet and isolated, and Bethlehem was in the boonies. But it turns out that area was in the only passage through the mountains, so there was a major trade route - which is why people fought a lot to take over the area. Natufians made a lot of progress there, and even more ancient people lived (and mixed) there, developing their technology. There are piles and piles of stone tools all around ancient Saudi Arabia and the area. So fascinating. Thank you for keeping us updated on the news from archaeology.
Neat topic. I first read about the Natufians in Steve Mithen’s “After the Ice”. It was the first time I encountered John Lubbock as well, now largely forgotten in the public discourse despite his important contributions to public policy in Britain like the Ancient Monuments Act and actually buying the ground Avebury stands on the prevent its further destruction. You two are my breath of fresh amid all the political turmoil in the USA which the UA-cam algorithms keep throwing at me.
After 2 renovations and dealing with bureaucracy, my first thought hearing that word was " who are the inspectors enforcing those codes? Who is controlling them and giving orders?"
Probably already mentioned, but round shapes requires less rock/bricks to enclose the same amount space. A benefit in less collecting, cutting or curing.
To be fair, science is never settled. It's always moving itself along and this is a great example of that. But I get where you're coming from - we get a dopamine hit whenever the curtain gets drawn back just a little more. M😊
Very interesting, I'm with Michael the mud brick is what creates the move to very rectilinear buildings. Although I have just been reading in 'the human past' how in around c6500 bc in the Levant and Anatolia as people moved from more urban settlements with communal storage to individual settlements they also moved from rectilinear to round buildings again! 🤷♂️
Re circular v rectangular buildings I was reminded of a long ago lecture, 1969 or 70, by one of the architect tutors at what was still Kingston-upon-Thames school of Art. He liked to go back to his buildings and talk to the inhabitants to get their opinions of his work. He had built some flats for elderly people and taken into account how they might move about in wheelchairs or using zimmer frames. He had come up with octagonal (or was it hexagonal?) rooms. None of the residents had noticed that they did not have rectangular rooms but did feel they had more space to move about than in their old homes. I wonder if this was something that was considered by ancient builders. Also, having sat in the reconstruction of a roundhouse in TWIGS, the garden of the Richmond Fellowship in Swindon, it is a very comfortable shape. If I could choose I would prefer a round to a rectangular home.
Coming from the building industry myself (sort of, I am a pensioner now), I have no doubt whatsoever that the shapes - and other features - of houses back in the day were ultimately down to what's most practical ("most bang per buck") for the actual builders. I don't think there were "architects" as such back then. How they made their joists and rafters is really what it boils down to.
Thanks again for a great discussion, love the common sense thinking. Pre and post mud bricks mmmmm food for thought about the environmental changes necessitating changes in materials. Population increases making rectilinear buildings far easier to expand for increase in population. Lots to think about.
Settlement archaeology tells us that a straight line is almost always the best (except following waterways if travelling on land) and the hexagonal shape of a honeycomb is the most efficient structure. square as opposed to any other structure allows for the sharing of walls and most efficient use of limited space
I recall reading some tourist guides in Germany, Belgium & France stating that you could pretty much be assured that round towers were more modern & advanced than rectilinear towers... And that certainly seemed to be true at all the intact castles & towers & also at the ruins. Earlier structures were rectilinear, later structures were circular. So, are we coming 'full circle' here?
One of the things that must be considered in all structural construction is its function, and, the local weather. All of the structures had roofs. What was the available roofing material. and what was it keeping out? Desert climates with little rainfall and lower humidity. Did not have to deal with the abundance of rain or snow in other areas. In early architecture, form tended to follow function, and that included the availability of building materials.
Having in my life build actual structures, rectangular is easier to build then round, especially with solid shaped stuff. I created a round tent structure and the math involved to calculate and cut out the roof was quite challenging.
Good show. The idea of “building codes” in the pre-pottery neolithic sounds like an analytic anachronism, given the modern, plain English meaning of “building codes” as a set of regulations that require that construction practices conform to certain requirements related to safety, strength, durability, etc. It’s taking a modern idea, carrying it into the deep past, and giving it a quite different meaning that is not at all clear to the general reader.
So fascinating that the Natufians and the builders of Gobekli Tepe were both hunter gatherers, neighbors and likely interacted and traded with each other. Would love if some day DNA testing informs us if the two groups interacted in other ways as well. Unfortunately, it seems, DNA is not well preserved in the Anatolia and Levant regions. But DNA testing keeps getting more sophisticated, so maybe / hopefully someday.
the brick thing is important 💪🏽 The brick revolution is about mass production of a simple object with a multitude of ways to use. It makes things possible that where no option before. It also „democratizes“ building. The importance of new building material made me think of the German designer of the Brooklyn bridge and his son & wife who actually built it: Mr. Roebling The base for this revolutionary building was his invention of the wire rope. This material totally changed architecture and therewith the society. Bridges always connected people - Roeblin created urban space… until today next big step was concrete I do absolutely see how those kind of „under the radar inventions“ of „new material to create with“ change the path of a society. Architecture is only one way to look at it. The Material we work with defines our societies ( stone/bronze/iron/steel/oil/uranium/ rareearth…) Now what this says about us And how we have a tendency to get dependent on our inventions… Is another thing to think about THX as always
it seems to me that its easier to erect a roundhouse, so thats how they always did it.. but if people squeeze in around you, they find that square is more efficiant. So when you rebuild you copy them.
It does not have much to do with "social structure". Not directly, at least. Round is the most efficient shape for single-room isolated huts, saving about 15% in material and construction time. It is also simpler to build. That is why it is still the standard house architecture in many regions of Africa, in the jungles of South America. That is why Mongolian huts are round... The square shape is forced when a maximum number of homes have to be built in a fixed space, with "streets" to reach them. In particular, when several homes are built more or less at the same time: then square is more efficient because walls are shared. Square also has advantages for a large building that is to be divided internally into rooms and halls. So the shift seen at places like Jericho and GT is primarily an increase in habitation density, when more houses had to be built in a fixed space. The question that should be asked, then, is what caused people to want to bunch up at GT, Jericho, Çatalhöyük... In a walled city, the space is limited by the walls, and the motivation to build there is obvious. That explains why homes in the European Bronze age are invariably square. So maybe *that* is what caused the shift from round to square: the building of city walls? Or maybe, as possibly in GT, people huddled around springs in an arid landscape?
The full area extent of GT has not been excavated and probably never will be. It's hard to get a sense of how HUGE it is unless you've been there. However, it has been excavated in depth - in other words, the stratification through time is well known and uncovering more of the overall area is unlikely to hold chronological surprises. M.
@@ThePrehistoryGuys honestly I'd be here for days pointing out all the discrepancies with GT alone lol so for the sake of getting on with it I propose another alternative- just stick with PPN so BPPN-APPN lol love the content guys
Would not the shape of a building also be based on the materials being used to build it? Stone or brick might lead to rounder buildings. Logs might be easier to build rectangular or square buildings. Also, the need for two story buildings would probably be easier in a four sided shape. Cheers
Look at ancient tents, they often mimic buildings. I used to stay in an octagonal "phone booth" with a central pole. It was a 17th century reproduction with lineage going directly to the Romans. It wasn't their idea, surely.
Hi Frank - so kind of you to consider supporting us. As to how - depends what works best for you - Patreon is the subscription route but also one-off contributions to the Göbekli Tepe to Stonehenge Project are also very welcome. Patreon: www.patreon.com/c/theprehistoryguys Göbekli Tepe to Stonehenge: buymeacoffee.com/prehistoryguys All best! 😊M
Wood - are upper stories are easier to build on rectangular than round buildings? "Archaeologists say" - I wonder if an AI summary of the original paper halucinated that. PPNA to PPNB. I thought, maybe that's a thing locally relevant to Jericho, not necessarily regional - but the data does show an obvious shift. Codes/practices - Not everyone who builds a house is skillful at it, especially before cities encourage specialisation. If you need shelter, you cobble something together the best you can, and it's easier to be accidentally round-ish than accidentally straight.
i am left wondering what archeologists a few thousand years in the future (my current frame of mind doesn't hold out much hope for them being humans) will find of our constructions? will it all be buried in a layer of soot...
The whole 'building codes' thing rather threw me. It made me think of a fellow in a loincloth and hard hat telling me my wall is too close to my neighbor! Surely 'building technique' or 'style' would be more accurate? Possibly even substitute 'change' for 'advance', since materials and needs vary--or, as you posited, the development of mud brick.
Every person who wants to talk about mud bricks should spend a couple of months making them. It is not as simple as it appears when done by an expert. There are many ways to get it wrong. Many ways.
@ThePrehistoryGuys Fair enough, but do you think you'd actually lose suscribers if you started your videos with a quick précis? Would it be too much trouble or do any harm? There's a reason the format has evolved to be what it is.
@@kitten_processing_inc4415 I must be missing something - I thought that's what I did. There's also the description down below. Depends what you mean by waffle, I suppose. Sorry it's not to your liking. Cheers, Michael.
100% gratitude to the two of you, for all your knowledge and enthusiasm you share in such a beautifully sculpted posts.
A very big hello laced with warm and kind thoughts to everybody that reads this comment.
I wholeheartedly agree. Happy to support their work and loving the huge backlog of information available via patrion
So kind - thank you! That makes us very happy 😊
Loving this channel!
As a computer scientist, I understood the importance of data - not only in quantity but accuracy - and I'm glad to see such techniques applied to archeology. There is so much data out there in what we would call "disjointed sets", that combining them in a way to gain new insights is quite exciting.
The mud-brick revolution---brilliant idea.
Rupert & Michael!!!!! My weekend is starting off on a good footing so far. Thank you both for educating & entertaining us all. 🦋💚🌍💚🦋
You are so welcome! M😊
5:21 Thanks for giving us the slightly moistened version. Building codes bring to mind bureaucracy, which brings to mind cuneiform and the reason that so many samples of the writing remain.
I think a time bar at the bottom of your screen as a visual aid could be tremendously helpful. Just a simple, but bold lines ticked out horizontally, flashed briefly while discussing time periods; for beginners and for people who are more visual. Like I can imagine and place things more quickly into temporal context. Great job on the show.
Agree
A central hearth will warm a circular space more evenly than a rectilinear space.
Which makes that there is draught, or air flow in your house.
Great pragmatic discussion. I'm sure the invention of pottery and mud bricks went hand in hand. Once a person gets familiar with a new material or process, they're going to think about more ways to use it.
Thank you @BronZeage! Actually, for whatever reason, pottery in this part of the world only came in at least 700 years after mud bricks - if the possible ceramics at Boncuklu Höyük are to be included in the equation. Otherwise it's another 1,000 years after that! Go figure.
Mud brick house burns, and some of those bricks get 'fired' -
When I was young, many many years ago, I was taught that this area was very quiet and isolated, and Bethlehem was in the boonies. But it turns out that area was in the only passage through the mountains, so there was a major trade route - which is why people fought a lot to take over the area. Natufians made a lot of progress there, and even more ancient people lived (and mixed) there, developing their technology. There are piles and piles of stone tools all around ancient Saudi Arabia and the area. So fascinating. Thank you for keeping us updated on the news from archaeology.
How you manage to avoid saying "It's goodbye from me...and it's goodbye from him" is beyond me :P Another great video, guys :) Keep up the work :)
Rupert? Yes - I cue him up every time! 🤣 One day - one day .. M
Neat topic. I first read about the Natufians in Steve Mithen’s “After the Ice”. It was the first time I encountered John Lubbock as well, now largely forgotten in the public discourse despite his important contributions to public policy in Britain like the Ancient Monuments Act and actually buying the ground Avebury stands on the prevent its further destruction. You two are my breath of fresh amid all the political turmoil in the USA which the UA-cam algorithms keep throwing at me.
Thank you for your kind words. Good to know. M😊
Standardized is a much better choice of words than codified. Even today, i know of no building codes requiring rectangular buildings.
After 2 renovations and dealing with bureaucracy, my first thought hearing that word was " who are the inspectors enforcing those codes? Who is controlling them and giving orders?"
Probably already mentioned, but round shapes requires less rock/bricks to enclose the same amount space. A benefit in less collecting, cutting or curing.
I love when " settled science" gets unsettled.
To be fair, science is never settled. It's always moving itself along and this is a great example of that. But I get where you're coming from - we get a dopamine hit whenever the curtain gets drawn back just a little more. M😊
Science advances by unsettling and by unsettling the advances as well. Instead of a criticism of science it is the strength of science.
It occurs to me that there isn't a benefit to a rectilinear structure until you want to insert a rectilinear feature ( bed, walls) into it.
Very interesting, I'm with Michael the mud brick is what creates the move to very rectilinear buildings. Although I have just been reading in 'the human past' how in around c6500 bc in the Levant and Anatolia as people moved from more urban settlements with communal storage to individual settlements they also moved from rectilinear to round buildings again! 🤷♂️
Danke!
Thank you so much for your support!
Vielen Dank für Ihre Unterstützung!
I like that kind of reasoning, Michael! Makes sense ecologically and mechanically, and I think goes far to explain the dataset.
Re circular v rectangular buildings I was reminded of a long ago lecture, 1969 or 70, by one of the architect tutors at what was still Kingston-upon-Thames school of Art. He liked to go back to his buildings and talk to the inhabitants to get their opinions of his work.
He had built some flats for elderly people and taken into account how they might move about in wheelchairs or using zimmer frames. He had come up with octagonal (or was it hexagonal?) rooms. None of the residents had noticed that they did not have rectangular rooms but did feel they had more space to move about than in their old homes.
I wonder if this was something that was considered by ancient builders.
Also, having sat in the reconstruction of a roundhouse in TWIGS, the garden of the Richmond Fellowship in Swindon, it is a very comfortable shape. If I could choose I would prefer a round to a rectangular home.
Coming from the building industry myself (sort of, I am a pensioner now), I have no doubt whatsoever that the shapes - and other features - of houses back in the day were ultimately down to what's most practical ("most bang per buck") for the actual builders. I don't think there were "architects" as such back then. How they made their joists and rafters is really what it boils down to.
BGT/AGT - love it!
Thanks again for a great discussion, love the common sense thinking. Pre and post mud bricks mmmmm food for thought about the environmental changes necessitating changes in materials. Population increases making rectilinear buildings far easier to expand for increase in population. Lots to think about.
Settlement archaeology tells us that a straight line is almost always the best (except following waterways if travelling on land) and the hexagonal shape of a honeycomb is the most efficient structure. square as opposed to any other structure allows for the sharing of walls and most efficient use of limited space
I recall reading some tourist guides in Germany, Belgium & France stating that you could pretty much be assured that round towers were more modern & advanced than rectilinear towers... And that certainly seemed to be true at all the intact castles & towers & also at the ruins. Earlier structures were rectilinear, later structures were circular.
So, are we coming 'full circle' here?
One of the things that must be considered in all structural construction is its function, and, the local weather. All of the structures had roofs. What was the available roofing material. and what was it keeping out? Desert climates with little rainfall and lower humidity. Did not have to deal with the abundance of rain or snow in other areas. In early architecture, form tended to follow function, and that included the availability of building materials.
Having in my life build actual structures, rectangular is easier to build then round, especially with solid shaped stuff. I created a round tent structure and the math involved to calculate and cut out the roof was quite challenging.
They started building more rectilinear buildings after mud bricks had been invented!
Fascinating, Captain!
{:o:O:}
Wonderful insights here, makes me wonder where exactly mudbricks were first used
BGT! Those sites in Europe with the trapezoidal 'sheds' or 'temples' always intrigued me.
New study reveals 13 million year old relative of Gibbons. I had no idea they could live that long.
Good show. The idea of “building codes” in the pre-pottery neolithic sounds like an analytic anachronism, given the modern, plain English meaning of “building codes” as a set of regulations that require that construction practices conform to certain requirements related to safety, strength, durability, etc. It’s taking a modern idea, carrying it into the deep past, and giving it a quite different meaning that is not at all clear to the general reader.
On mudbricks being a more viable building material -- if there's less rain, your house is less likely to turn into a mudpile.
So fascinating that the Natufians and the builders of Gobekli Tepe were both hunter gatherers, neighbors and likely interacted and traded with each other. Would love if some day DNA testing informs us if the two groups interacted in other ways as well. Unfortunately, it seems, DNA is not well preserved in the Anatolia and Levant regions. But DNA testing keeps getting more sophisticated, so maybe / hopefully someday.
the brick thing is important 💪🏽
The brick revolution is about mass production of a simple object with a multitude of ways to use. It makes things possible that where no option before. It also „democratizes“ building.
The importance of new building material made me think of the German designer of the Brooklyn bridge and his son & wife who actually built it:
Mr. Roebling
The base for this revolutionary building was his invention of the wire rope.
This material totally changed architecture and therewith the society.
Bridges always connected people - Roeblin created urban space… until today
next big step was concrete
I do absolutely see how those kind of „under the radar inventions“
of „new material to create with“
change the path of a society.
Architecture is only one way to look at it.
The Material we work with defines our societies ( stone/bronze/iron/steel/oil/uranium/ rareearth…)
Now what this says about us
And how we have a tendency to get dependent on our inventions…
Is another thing to think about
THX as always
6:50 Hunters? sure. At the same time they may be the first to make bread and brew beer
4:00 making actual sense
it seems to me that its easier to erect a roundhouse, so thats how they always did it.. but if people squeeze in around you, they find that square is more efficiant. So when you rebuild you copy them.
💙💙💙💙💙💙💙
BGT? Sure THAT date is written in stone? LOL
It does not have much to do with "social structure". Not directly, at least.
Round is the most efficient shape for single-room isolated huts, saving about 15% in material and construction time. It is also simpler to build. That is why it is still the standard house architecture in many regions of Africa, in the jungles of South America. That is why Mongolian huts are round...
The square shape is forced when a maximum number of homes have to be built in a fixed space, with "streets" to reach them. In particular, when several homes are built more or less at the same time: then square is more efficient because walls are shared. Square also has advantages for a large building that is to be divided internally into rooms and halls.
So the shift seen at places like Jericho and GT is primarily an increase in habitation density, when more houses had to be built in a fixed space. The question that should be asked, then, is what caused people to want to bunch up at GT, Jericho, Çatalhöyük...
In a walled city, the space is limited by the walls, and the motivation to build there is obvious. That explains why homes in the European Bronze age are invariably square. So maybe *that* is what caused the shift from round to square: the building of city walls? Or maybe, as possibly in GT, people huddled around springs in an arid landscape?
No BGT-AGT. Only because we haven't fully excavated and found out the full extent of GT as to how far back and how recent it may continue... Lol
The full area extent of GT has not been excavated and probably never will be. It's hard to get a sense of how HUGE it is unless you've been there. However, it has been excavated in depth - in other words, the stratification through time is well known and uncovering more of the overall area is unlikely to hold chronological surprises. M.
@@ThePrehistoryGuys honestly I'd be here for days pointing out all the discrepancies with GT alone lol so for the sake of getting on with it I propose another alternative- just stick with PPN so BPPN-APPN lol love the content guys
Would not the shape of a building also be based on the materials being used to build it? Stone or brick might lead to rounder buildings. Logs might be easier to build rectangular or square buildings. Also, the need for two story buildings would probably be easier in a four sided shape. Cheers
its also easier to add a second floor to a square building
i wonder how far the Natufians traded?...
Rather than use the BC/AD or BCE/CE which is contentious in some places why not stick to BP Before Present.
Look at ancient tents, they often mimic buildings. I used to stay in an octagonal "phone booth" with a central pole. It was a 17th century reproduction with lineage going directly to the Romans. It wasn't their idea, surely.
I sent you guys money before (year subscription), remind me how to send more please?
Hi Frank - so kind of you to consider supporting us. As to how - depends what works best for you - Patreon is the subscription route but also one-off contributions to the Göbekli Tepe to Stonehenge Project are also very welcome.
Patreon: www.patreon.com/c/theprehistoryguys
Göbekli Tepe to Stonehenge: buymeacoffee.com/prehistoryguys
All best! 😊M
@ThePrehistoryGuys Super. I just sent an additional 100 pounds.
@@FrankOClark Oh wow! Thank you. You're helping make it possible for us to film in Greece & the Aegean in the Spring. Watch this space 😊M.
Wood - are upper stories are easier to build on rectangular than round buildings?
"Archaeologists say" - I wonder if an AI summary of the original paper halucinated that.
PPNA to PPNB. I thought, maybe that's a thing locally relevant to Jericho, not necessarily regional - but the data does show an obvious shift.
Codes/practices - Not everyone who builds a house is skillful at it, especially before cities encourage specialisation. If you need shelter, you cobble something together the best you can, and it's easier to be accidentally round-ish than accidentally straight.
i am left wondering what archeologists a few thousand years in the future
(my current frame of mind doesn't hold out much hope for them being humans)
will find of our constructions?
will it all be buried in a layer of soot...
Squaring the circle is childs play for any DJ. Unless…
The whole 'building codes' thing rather threw me. It made me think of a fellow in a loincloth and hard hat telling me my wall is too close to my neighbor! Surely 'building technique' or 'style' would be more accurate? Possibly even substitute 'change' for 'advance', since materials and needs vary--or, as you posited, the development of mud brick.
I don't mind it changing. It isn't 2025 anymore than it is year 6,000 and whatever from the beginning.
Every person who wants to talk about mud bricks should spend a couple of months making them. It is not as simple as it appears when done by an expert. There are many ways to get it wrong. Many ways.
Actually I would suggest dating from end of younger dryas
You obviously don't watch UA-cam. Nobody waits through 5 minutes of waffle before there's any meaningful content. Hopeless.
Our stats tell us otherwise. Sorry.
@ThePrehistoryGuys Fair enough, but do you think you'd actually lose suscribers if you started your videos with a quick précis? Would it be too much trouble or do any harm? There's a reason the format has evolved to be what it is.
@@kitten_processing_inc4415 I must be missing something - I thought that's what I did. There's also the description down below. Depends what you mean by waffle, I suppose. Sorry it's not to your liking. Cheers, Michael.