The history of construction traces the changes in building tools, methods, techniques and systems used in the field of construction. It explains the evolution of how humans created shelter and other structures that comprises the entire built environment. It covers several fields including structural engineering, civil engineering, city growth and population growth, which are relatives to branches of technology, science, history, and architecture. The fields allow both modern and ancient construction to be analyzed, as well as the structures, building materials, and tools used.
Construction is an ancient human activity that began at around 4000 BC as a response to the human need for shelter. It has evolved and undergone different trends over time, marked by a few key principles: durability of the materials used, increase in building height and span, the degree of control exercised over the interior environment, and finally, the energy available for the construction process.
Prehistoric Era Stone Age Humans during the Paleolithic era were hunter-gatherers. Their nomadic lifestyle led to temporary and short-lived buildings leading to a lack of surviving evidences of construction. However, it is believed that the earliest evidence of construction in the world is the 1.8 million year-old stone circle found at Olduvai Gorge representing the remains of a windbreak.Recent paleoanthropological work at DK East, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Charles Egeland, Alexa Uberseder, Cynthia Fadem. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 397712)
By the Mesolithic era, humans started to develop agriculture.Snir, Ainit (2015). "The Origin of Cultivation and Proto-Weeds, Long before Neolithic Farming". PLOS ONE. 10 (7): e0131422. Bibcode:2015PLoSO..1031422S. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0131422. PMC 4511808. PMID 26200895. Hunter-gatherers built temporary shelter for hunters who would ambush their prey. Currently, the first evidence of man-made shelter dates back to 400,000 B.C. in Terra Amata, France which served as housing for hunters.
Neolithic Era
By the Neolithic era, also known as the New Stone Age, humans developed agriculture and started to cultivate plants and domesticate animals. This change from the nomadic lifestyle meant that humans started building walls and forming cities. In addition to living in caves and using rock shelters, the first buildings were simple tents, like the Inuit's tupiq, and huts. Huts were built as protection from the elements like pit-houses, and as fortifications for safety like crannog.
Their shelters were built self-sufficiently by their inhabitants rather than by specialist builders, using locally available materials and traditional designs and methods. Because of this, what little can be said about very early construction is mostly conjecture and based on vernacular architecture or what is known about the way nomadic hunter-gatherers and herdsmen in remote areas build shelters today. For example, the first bridges made by humans were probably simple wooden logs placed across a stream and later on evolved into timber trackways.
Building materials and tools
Pre-historic humans made tools out of bone, ivory, antler, hide, stone, wood, grass, metals (gold, copper and silver) and animal fibers. Various tools for cutting (hand axe, chopper, adze and celt), scrape or chop (flake tool), and tools to pound, pierce, roll, pull and lever were made and used. As building materials, they used bones such as mammoth ribs, hide, stone, metal, bark, bamboo, and animal dung.
Pre-historic humans also used bricks and lime plaster as building materials. For example, mud bricks and clay mortar dated to 9000 BC were found in Jericho. These mudbricks were formed with the hands rather than wooden moulds and herringbone pattern were made by the brick-maker's thumbs.
Building techniques The absence of metal tools placed limitations on the materials that could be worked, but it was still possible to build quite elaborate stone structures with ingenuity using dry stone walling techniques such as those found at Skara Brae in Scotland, Europe's most complete Neolithic village. Another example of a settlement built in the Neolithic is the Göbekli Tepe. It is made with T-shaped limestone pillars carved out using flint points and other rock-cut architecture methods.Schönicke, Julia (2019). "There and Back Again — Towards a New Understanding of Abandonment Practices at the Neolithic Settlement of Göbekli Tepe". Bridging the Gap: Disciplines, Times, and Spaces in Dialogue. Vol. 1. pp. 210–237. The corbelled roof of Newgrange (c. 3,200 BC) shows that corbel arches were used since the Neolithic age.
One of the largest structures of this period was the Neolithic long house. It was a long, narrow timber dwelling built by the first farmers in Europe at least as early as 5000 to 6000 BC. Like all timber-framed and log structures (stilt houses) in early cultures, only the very lowest parts of the walls and post holes are unearthed in archaeological excavations; making reconstruction of the upper parts of these buildings largely conjectural.
The most remarkable Neolithic structure in Western Europe is the iconic megalith known as Stonehenge, regarded by some archaeologists as displaying methods of timber construction such as at woodhenge translated into stone, a process known as petrification. The now ruinous remains are of post and lintel construction and include massive sandstone lintels which were located on supporting uprights by means of mortise and tenon joints; the lintels themselves being end-jointed by the use of tongue and groove joints. There is also evidence of prefabrication of the stonework; the symmetrical geometric arrays of stone clearly indicate that the builders of Stonehenge had mastered sophisticated surveying methods.
Gallery of Neolithic tools
Copper Age and Bronze Age
Copper came into use before 5,000 BC and was one of the early metals used by humans for producing tools, alongside gold, silver and lead. Unrefined copper was malleable, tough, strong, resistant to corrossion and much more versatile than stone causing a shift in preference of tool-making material. During this period, the saw was developed and was used as a building tool.
At around 3,100 BC, humans started experimenting with metals and forming alloys such as bronze (made when tin is added to copper) and brass (made when zinc is added to copper). Bronze could be cast into desired shapes and, if damaged, could be recast increasing the types of tools developed in this period. Copper and bronze were used for the same types of tools as stone but the less brittle, more durable material cut better. These advantages caused the switch from stone tools to metal tools. Both were also used to "harden" the cutting edge of tools such as the Egyptians using copper and bronze points for working soft stone including quarrying blocks and making rock-cut architecture.
During the Copper Age, the ancient Chinese invented fired bricks as early as 4400BC. In Chengtoushan, fired bricks were used as flooring for houses.Yoshinori Yasuda (2012). Water Civilization: From Yangtze to Khmer Civilizations. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 30–31. ISBN 9784431541103. Clay was also used as sewer pipes by the Mesopotamians at around 4000 BC, with the earliest examples found in the Temple of Bel in Babylonia. Latrines in the city of Uruk have raised fired brick foot platforms at around 3200 BC. Mudbricks faced were burnt brick set in bitumen were used to originally construct the Ziggurat of Ur.Woolley, C. Leonard (1972) . The Ziggurat and its Surroundings. Ur Excavations. Vol. 5. Trustees of the Two Museums.
The wheel was invented by the Sumerians in the Copper Age but it was not until around 3500 BC when it was used in transportation. Heavy loads were moved on boats, sledges (a primitive sled) or on rollers.Haltenberger, M. (1915). Primitive Carriers in Land Transportation. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, 47(10), 729–745. https://doi.org/10.2307/201681 The oldest-preserved measuring rod made of copper-alloy bar dates to 2650 BC and was found at the Sumerian city, Nippur (modern-day Iraq)
The post and lintel construction method was popularized by the Egyptians at around 3100 BC to build temples such as the Great Pyramid of Giza(c. 2560). This technique was later adapted by the Greek, as seen in the Tomb of Agamemnon (c.1250 BC), and by the Romans. Cyclopean masonry used in the Arkadiko Bridge, was also widely used by the Mycenean.
Iron Age
The Iron Age began around 1200 BC and ended at around 500 BC. Humans may have smelted iron sporadically throughout the Bronze Age but was thought to be an inferior metal because iron tools and weapons weren't as hard or durable as bronze counterparts. It was not until the creation of steel, combining iron and carbon, that iron became prominent. Steel can be hardened and tempered producing a sharp, durable cutting edge allowing for the creating of better tools such as hammers, chisels, knives and axes.
The most common type of building during the Iron Age the present-day United Kingdom were roundhouses. These were made from stone or wooden posts joined by wattle-and-daub panels topped with a conical thatched roof. Archeologists presume that the walls were made of timber planking using a side ax to remove excess timber.Bennett, P. (2014, March 29). Iron Age roundhouses. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/ironage_roundhouse_01.shtml
Civilizations Ancient Mesopotamia The earliest large-scale buildings for which evidence survives have been found in ancient Mesopotamia. The smaller dwellings only survive in traces of foundations, but the later civilizations built very sizeable structures in the forms of palaces, temples and ziggurats and took particular care to build them out of materials that last, which has ensured that very considerable parts have remained intact. Major technical achievement is evidenced by the construction of great cities such as Uruk and Ur. The Ziggurat of Ur is an outstanding building of the period, despite major reconstruction work. Another fine example is the ziggurat at Chogha Zanbil in modern Iran. Cities created demands for new technologies such as drains for animal and human sewage and paved streets.
Archaeological evidence has shown the existence of pitched-brick vaults such as at Tell al-Rimah in what is now Iraq.
Building techniques and materials The chief building material was the mud-brick, formed in wooden moulds similar to those used to make adobe bricks. Bricks varied widely in size and format from small bricks that could be lifted in one hand to ones as big as large paving slabs. Rectangular and square bricks were both common. They were laid in virtually every bonding pattern imaginable and used with considerable sophistication. Drawings survive on clay tablets from later periods showing that buildings were set out on brick modules. By 3500 BC, fired bricks came into use and surviving records show a very complex division of labour into separate tasks and trades. Fired bricks and stone were used for pavement.
Life in general was governed by complex ritual and this extended to rituals for setting-out buildings and moulding the first bricks. Contrary to popular belief the arch was not invented by the Romans, but was used in these civilizations. The later Mesopotamian civilizations, particularly Babylon and thence Susa, developed glazed brickwork to a very high degree, decorating the interiors and exteriors of their buildings with glazed brick reliefs, examples of which survive in the Tehran archaeological museum, the Louvre Museum in Paris and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.
Building Code
The Code of Hammurabi by the Babylonians of Ancient Mesopotamia is known to contain the earliest written building code.
Ancient Egypt