Home is where the hearth is. At least it was for thousands of years, when humans needed fire and shelter to stay alive. The tricky part is exactly how long ago this started, exactly or even in a rough estimate or even was it before they lost their fur and became hominids?
A house was pretty easy to define when I was six and learned “how” to draw them. Peaked roof, two windows in front, a door with a doorknob, and probably a chimney. I always drew a house with a chimney, after examples I’d seen, even though I didn’t have a fireplace until I was about twenty, and then we rarely used it, once I learned I had to clean it. But it turns out house=home=shelter is up for debate from the archaeologists, especially as they vie to see which came first. They did all seem to have fireplaces.
The last few days, my topics of ancient games, calendars, and fashion were on comparatively sophisticated inventions. Dates of 3000 BCE were modern compared with today’s topic. Housing is such a fundamental need that its origins go back much further other inventions, almost to the beginning of the human timeline. As usual, three angles of approach:
- What does “house” mean?
- When and where in the world was “housing” first created
- What other aspects of humanity are revealed by knowing #1 and #2?
