There’s often a distinction drawn between ‘natural’ and ‘man-made’. A colony of beavers builds a dam to create a still pond in which they can construct a secure lodge to live in. Humans build a dam – admittedly on a far larger scale – and produce reservoirs to provide drinking water for their own settlements. One is generally considered to be natural behaviour while the other will be described as man-made – as if human beings are no longer part of the natural world.
But is it in our own nature to construct things? Are humans built to build and if so, where will this take us in the future?
Ancient architecture and a brief history of buildings
We’ve all heard of so-called cavemen and there’s certainly plenty of evidence that early humans made use of naturally formed shelters such as caves. We don’t know exactly when humans first started constructing their own shelters because the simplest structures – tents, bivouacs and simple huts made of sticks and hides – don’t leave a trace. What we know is pretty much based on supposition and observing the way nomadic people still live in remote parts of the world.
There is, however, plenty of evidence of building, and many preserved structures remain from the Neolithic era or New Stone Age. From pit huts constructed largely of mammoth bones to artificial islands known as crannogs, we were building structures to protect us from the elements, predators, and other people.
Now, new crannog structures are popular places to stay during vacation.
Dating back to around 3000 BC,