Early Architecture

Skara Brae (3200 - 2200 BC), Orkney, Scotland. This Neolithic village lies on the shores of Bay o Skaill on the western coast of the Orkney mainland. It is comprised of eight dwellings that are linked together with a series of low alleyways. Each of the houses has the same basic design, which is a large square room with a fireplace, a bed on each side and a shelved dresser on the wall that is opposite the doorway. It is believed that sand dunes finally led the village to be evacuated but it had been inhabited by about seven generations before this time. It was discovered forty centuries later in the mid-1800s by another storm. The people had only stone available for building, thus, there is a large assortment of stone furniture ranging from beds to limpet tanks.

Stonehenge (3000 - 1500 BC), England. There are any number of legends surrounding the question of who built this henge and why but the best guess seems to be that Stonehenge was begun by people of the late Neolithic period, about 3000 BC and then carried on by people over time. It is believed that the inner stone circle was build in about 2000 BC but abandoned before it was completed. The bluestones used are from the Prescelly Mountains, about 240

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The first one was built by Marcus Agrippa but it was destroyed by fire in 80 AD. A grand canopy on four curving columns was placed over St. Since the water had to flow down the terraces without destroying them, huge slabs of stone covered with layers of reed, asphalt and tiles and th!

en covered with sheets of lead were used in the garden. There are unfluted forty-foot high unfluted columns made of black and red Egyptian granite. Maria della Rotonda, was dedicated to the twelve Olympian gods. The city's outer walls are about 10 miles long and 80 feet high although some accounts say the walls were originally over 300 feet high. The exterior was plain but the interior was covered with fresco paintings and mosaics. Access to the ziggurat was through three converging ramps. The stepped dome is made of concrete that is 20 feet at the base and then tapers in stages on the outside as it rises to its zenith at the eye, a hole that is 30 feet in diameter. These larger stones were then prepared to accommodate stone lintels along the top surface of the ring. The original form was within a court that measured 62. The giant sarsen stones that form the outer circle weigh as much as 50 tons each and had to be transported 20 miles.

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