Ancient History

History of architecture Timeline

The History of Architecture Timeline lists dates and historic periods of

transformations in Architecture at various parts of the world,
based on the change in Dynasties, practices, lifestyle, culture and
traditions. Also prestigious thoughts of great Architects along with the
advent of new materials and technological advancements added to the
new styles, advancements and in-turn sophistications in architecture
that we see now.
This timeline does not start and stop at precise points on a calendar.
Periods and styles flow together, sometimes merging contradictory
ideas, sometimes inventing new approaches, and often reawakening
and reinventing older movements.
The Architectural Styles tracing the timeline:

Prehistoric (Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic)

Ancient (Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Roman and Greek)
Medieval
Renaissance
Baroque
Neo classical
Early Modern
Modern
Art Deco
Post Modern
Deconstructivist

Pre-History and History:

The word prehistory gave rise to words such as prehistoric man and
prehistoric period. In short it can be said that prehistory is the term
that is used to denote the time period before recorded history.
Historians and geologists use the word prehistory to denote the
period of time since human existence began.
It is important to note that prehistory is characterized by the
three-age system. The three ages by which prehistory is divided are
called the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. These
three ages are characterized by the types of tools used and the
materials that were used in the making these tools.
Written records almost do not exist in the case of prehistory.

History is served well and to nicety by written records. Most of the

empires and their contribution to architecture have come to be known
to the posterity because of the recorded historical texts written during
those periods.
Hence it is true that history depends on written source. It is a
recorded set of events that might have happened during a
particular period of time. History in short can be called the study of
human past. History heavily relies on writing and hence it is
understood that history could mean that time period after writing was
invented.

Stone Age
Stone Age is that period of prehistory when people used crude
sets of stones for hunting and other purposes. The stone age was
a period between 7,00,000 to 8000.B.C
People lead nomadic life. Lived on fruits, berries, roots and raw
flesh. Hides of the animals were used as cloths and bones were
used as weapons.
Stone age divided into :
 Paleolithic
Mesolithic and
Neolithic

MOLDOVA:

Earliest settlements by ancient man during 44,000 B.C found on

Dniester river bank found between modern day Romania and Ukraine.

The house type measures around 8m x 5m internally.

Shelter consists of wooden framework covered with bones, skins

which also enclosed around 15 hearths.
TERRA AMATA, France (3,00,000 BC)

Found around 3,00,000 B.C in the southern France City.

Oval huts ranging from 15 m in length to 6m in width built on the
sandy sea shore.
The hut walls were made up of stalks about 3 diameter braced
on the outside by a ring of stones.
A line of stout post about 12cm diameter along the axis of the
hut.
The floor of each hut was covered with thick bed of organic
matter and ash.
Each house had a hearth pit of about 12 diameter. These hearths
are covered by pebble stones.
PIT HOUSES:

More common in Eastern Europe with severely low temperatures.

Oval trapezoidal, pear shaped structures with sizes between 5m-

8m x 2.5m 3.5m

Central post holes indicating existence of roof.

Constructed by making shallow depressions in the ground

surrounded by a ring of mammoth bones and tusks.

LEPENSKI VIR: (5400 B.C) on a river Danube in Yugoslavia:

The houses are built on terraces, in rows about twenty.

Range between 5m to 30m.

The wide end having entrance was oriented towards the river

The floors were hard limestone plaster covered by a thin red

burnished surface
 Stone Age Settlements
Jericho (9000 BC)

Jericho is thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in

the world dating back nearly 10,000 years.
It was a mighty fenced city in the midst of a vast grove of palm
trees, in the plain of Jordan, six miles north of the Dead Sea.
The population varied from 200 to 3000 people through the
course of evolution of the city.
Characterised by small circular dwellings, burials of the dead
within the floors of building
These circular dwellings were built of clay and straw bricks left to
dry in the sun, which were plastered together with mud mortar.
Each house generally measured about 5 meters and was roofed
with mud-smeared brush. These houses were clustered around a
courtyard.
Hearths were located within and outside homes.

The fortification was the most striking feature.

The wall was made of massive stone that measured 3.6 meters
high and 1.8 meters wide at the base.
Inside this wall stood a tower over 3.6 meters containing an
internal staircase with 22 stone steps.
The wall may have served as a defense against flood and the
tower , for ceremonial purposes.
 During the Bronze Age, the city possessed an extensive cemetery
with vertical shaft-tombs and underground burial chambers.
These tombs were called Dolmens.

Jericho was built atop a great mound that was nearly 70ft high.
In antiquity, instead of tearing down an old city, people just built a
new one on top of it.
They just kept building newer cities in this manner for
generations, thus forming an artificial hill.
Even the walls were given a similar renewal by building a new set
of walls over the previous ones.

Catal Huyuk (7500 BC to 5700 BC)

The city of Catal Huyuk is an early Neolithic town located in the

Tarus Mount of Anatolia.
Most of the rooms are rectangular each about 25 sq. m with.
They were densely packed with occasional courtyards.
The entire city consists of population of about 6000-7000 people
where on an average about 5 people per house.
 The walls and floors of the house are covered in plaster, renewed
annually, and the walls in most houses are decorated with panels
of red.
The rooftops were effectively streets. The ceiling openings also
served as the only source of ventilation, allowing smoke from the
houses' open hearths and ovens to escape.
The furniture is built-in with brick platforms for sitting on, working
on, and sleeping on.
Under these platforms, the bones of the dead are buried, to
remain part of the family.

BISKUPIN SETTLEMENT, Poland (800 BC)

A fortified settlement located on an island in the Warta River

Valley in Central Poland.
The settlement began during the late Bronze and early Iron ages.
A walled settlement that had about 800-1000 people.
 Biskupin site was discovered in the late 1900s and it was
recreated.
The work was stopped due to WW-II and resumed in 1946

Location of
The site: Biskupin
The total site area of the swampy peninsula was 2 hectares
(close to 5 acres)
The site was surrounded by a breakwater of slanting piles
The interior of the breakwater was enclosed by a rampart made
of timber compartments.
The timber compartments were filled with earth and covered with
clay.
The rampart was essentially a wall, 550 meters in
circumference, 3.5 meters wide and 3 meters high.

Site Map of
Biskupin

Road network and Houses:

Around the settlement was a ring road, an internal street that
ran around the inside of the rampart.
The interior portion had streets running in-between the rows of
houses made of corduroy timber roads.
The settlement comprised of 13 rows of wooden houses, each
row covered by a common thatched roof of reeds.
There was about 105 dwellings altogether one for each family.
The houses were closely packed that one roof covered three to
ten houses.
 The settlement filled every possible space within the fortification,
with a small town square close to the entry.
The major occupation of people of Biskupin was Agriculture on
the mainland and Craft within the walls.

House Layout:

All homes had similar area of about 80 sq. m, divided into two
parts A vestibule and a main chamber.
The big room had a fireplace in the centre and a large bed on
the left where a whole family of 8-10 persons could sleep.
Biskupin settlement was abandoned after about 150 years
because of increased water-logging.

Stone Age Monuments

LASCAUX CAVE, France 16,500 to 13,000 BC

The cave has over 2,000 figures and paintings are upto 20,000
years old.
The images are broadly classified into three main categories:
o Animals
o Human figures
o Abstract signs
o Most of the major images have been painted onto the walls
using mineral pigments.
 o In total Lascauxs galleries and passageways extend about
240 meters in length.

Located in the Dordogne region of southwestern France.

Sections have been identified in the cave:
o Great Hall of the Bulls
o The Axial Gallery
o The Passageway
o The Nave
o The shaft of the Dead Man (Great Fissure)
o The Chamber of Felines

The Great Hall of the Bulls:

The entrance leads directly into the main Chamber called the
Great Hall of the Bulls.
The first 20 meters inside the cave slopes steeply down.
Measure 19 meters in length and width varies from 5.5 meters to
7.5 meters.
The wall decorations in the Great Hall of the Bulls are the most
impressive of all Paleolithic art. They extend on both sides of the
vaulted walls of a sloping floored rotunda.
The vast fresco, covering some 20 meters, is composed of three
groups of animals: horses, bulls and stags.
The Axial Gallery:

The Axial Gallery is justifiably considered to be the pinnacle of

Paleolithic cave art.
This gallery is over 22 meters long and leads to a dead-end.
The figures cover the entire upper reaches of the walls as well as,
in the first third of the Gallery, the surface of the vault.
Thereafter, the Axial Gallery becomes a rather narrow pathway
with a low ceiling.
Many of the paintings have been drawn using the folds and
contours of the walls to enhance depth and perspective.
At the end of the Gallery, is a section known as the Meander, the
upside down Horse.
The Passageway:

The Passageway connects the Halls of the Bulls to the Apse and
further leads to the Nave
It is not just a connecting passage but an important gallery
space, that is 17 meters in length and 4 meters in width. Ceiling
was about 2 meters.
Only a few painted or engraved traces of the iconography of this
gallery survive today.

The Apse:

The Apse is likely to have been the sacred heart of Lascaux.

Roughly 4.5 meters in diameter and the ceiling is about 2.7
meters high.
The Apse counts for more than half of the decorative art of the
entire cave.
The Shaft (of the dead man):

In the floor of the Apse is a hole giving access to The Shaft of the
Dead Man
It is the deepest, most confined part of the cave.
The Shaft forms a part of an underlying cavern known as the
Great Fissure.

The Nave:

The Nave measures 18 meters in length and 6 meters in width.

The ceiling varies from 2.5 meters to 8 meters at the far end.
It is made up of a series of adjoining chambers which gradually
become smaller.
The Nave mostly comprises of engravings due to the softness of
the rock.
The walls on either side of the axis are perfectly symmetrical.
 Five panels, each with its own characteristics, and unequally
distributed on either side distinguish this space.

The Mondmilch (Moonmilk) Gallery:

Between the Nave and the Chamber of the Felines, is the
Mondmilch (Moonmilk) Gallery, named after its milky-coloured
stalagmite encrustation.
Measures 20 meters long and about 2 meters wide, the ceiling
rises as high as 8 meters.
Its crumbly surfaces explains the complete absence of any
artistic decoration.

The Chamber of the Felines:

About 30 meters long, the Chamber of the Felines differs from
Lascaux's other galleries by its narrow dimensions and steep
gradient which makes movement difficult.
As a result, the spectator must crouch down to see the art, which
- as the name suggests - includes a number of cats. In addition,
there are a number of horses, and signs.
STONEHENGE, ENGLAND -3200BC to 2000BC

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in Wiltshire,

England
Stonehenge is the remains of a ring of standing stones set within
earthworks.
Archaeological evidence suggests that Stonehenge could have
been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings.
The Stonehenge is a system of circular megalithic formations
with a circular earth bank and ditch

Stonehenge went through three major stages of construction:

1. Stonehenge I (3200 BC):

5000 years ago Stonehenge began as a circular ditch and

bank 91.5 meters in diameter. The circle was irregular.
The ditch was made with cell like undulated walls; the depth
varied from 0.6 to 2 meters and had a flat bottom.
 There were two monoliths in the entrance and one outside
the earthwork. These stones were found to be brought from
Marlboro region 32 kilometers away from Stonehenge site.
Originally the monument appears to be oriented towards the
northeast moon.
Inside the periphery of the earthwork Aubrey holes. There
are 56 holes with steep sides and flat bottom.
These holes were dug as a reference to mark the profile of
the earthwork.

Aub
rey
2. Stonehenge II (2800 BC):D B Hol
The northeast entrance
i a was widened.
An avenue was constructed M
for es
about 510 meters to the
t
bottom of a dry valley. n on
c
The two entrance stones k wereoli
moved to straddle the axis
hentranceth
line in the northeast way.
The outer stone was replaced by another immense stone
s 5 meters high and weighs
called Heel stone which stood
around 30 tons. It was positioned slightly to the east of the
central axis line and a ditch was dug around it.
The station stones were 2.5 meters high and were erected
along with their islands.
They form a rectangle which aligns to the summer solstice
sunrise and the winter solstice sundown.
In Stonehenge II, the blue stones first appearance occurs in
a double crescent formation. They were around 2 meters
high and weighed
Altar uptoStation
6 tons each.
On the southwest
Stone side of Stones
the blue stone double crescent, the
Altar stone stood on the end.

Blue
Stone
sHeel
Stone
Avenu
e
3. Stonehenge III (2000 BC) The Megalithic Circle:

Around 2100 BC the Central Megalithic circle was

erected.
30 upright stones comprise the circle with 30 cross pieces on
the tops connected by tenon and mortise joint coupling.
The circle of megaliths rises 5 meter to the lintel tops and
the uprights weigh 30 tons each.
Two massive 5 meter high stones were placed to form the
gateway. They were called Slaughter Stones. This created
the light path effect on the summer solstice to reach the
Altar Stone.
At the centre stood 5 trilithons. The central trilithon was
7.5 meters tall. The other four measured 7 meters tall. These
trilithons weighed upto 50 tons.
By the end of this period two sets of large concentric holes
Y Holes and Z holes, were dug around the megalith. Their
purpose is unknown like the Aubry holes.
Relevance to the Solar and Lunar Movements:

All the Station stones, the Megalithic Circle, the 5 Trilithons, the
two massive Gateway stones and the Heel Stone are made of
Sandstone.
The largest stone at the Stonehenge is the single standing slab of
the Great Central Trilithon.
These Sarsen stones were brought as boulders and then
worked at site.

THE ALTAR STONE (Death Stone)

This stone is unique with a fine grained, pale green colour
This stone has been finely dressed to rectangular shape.
Initially it was placed upright directly on the axis line and then it
was put down horizontally.

Sars
en Altar
Ston
Circl
e e