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PRIMITIVE AND PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE:EARLY BEGINNINGS

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EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE:LAND AND PEOPLE, THE MIDDLE EMPIRE >>
CHAPTER I.
PRIMITIVE AND PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Desor, Les constructions lacustres du lac de Neufchatel.
Fergusson, Rude Stone Monuments. R. C. Hoare, Ancients Wiltshire. Lyell, The
Antiquity of Man. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times. Nadaillac, Prehistoric America.
Rougemont, L'age du Bronze. Tylor, Primitive Culture.
EARLY BEGINNINGS. It is impossible to trace the early stages of the process by
which true architecture grew out of the first rude attempts of man at building. The
oldest existing monuments of architecture--those of Chaldæa and Egypt--belong to
an advanced civilization. The rude and elementary structures built by savage and
barbarous peoples, like the Hottentots or the tribes of Central Africa, are not in
themselves works of architecture, nor is any instance known of the evolution of a
civilized art from such beginnings. So far as the monuments testify, no savage people
ever raised itself to civilization, and no primitive method of building was ever
developed into genuine architecture, except by contact with some existing civilization
of which it appropriated the spirit, the processes, and the forms. How the earliest
architecture came into existence is as yet an unsolved problem.
PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE is therefore a subject for the archæologist rather than
the historian of art, and needs here only the briefest mention. If we may judge of the
condition of the primitive races of antiquity by that of the savage and barbarous
peoples of our own time, they required only the simplest kinds of buildings, though
the purposes which they served were the same as those of later times in civilized
communities. A hut or house for shelter, a shrine of some sort for worship,
a stockade for defence, a cairn or mound over the grave of the chief or hero, were
provided out of the simplest materials, and these often of a perishable nature. Poles
supplied the framework; wattles, skins, or mud the walls; thatching or stamped earth
the roof. Only the simplest tools were needed for such elementary construction.
There was ingenuity and patient labor in work of this kind; but there was no
planning, no fitting together into a complex organism of varied materials shaped with
art and handled with science. Above all, there was no progression toward higher
ideals of fitness and beauty. Rudimentary art displayed itself mainly in objects of
worship, or in carvings on canoes and weapons, executed as talismans to ward off
misfortune or to charm the unseen powers; but even this art was sterile and never
grew of itself into civilized and progressive art.
Yet there must have been at some point in the remote past an exception to this rule.
Somewhere and somehow the people of Egypt must have developed from crude
beginnings the architectural knowledge and resource which meet us in the oldest
monuments, though every vestige of that early age has apparently perished. But
although nothing has come down to us of the actual work of the builders who
wrought in the primitive ages of mankind, there exist throughout Europe and Asia
almost countless monuments of a primitive character belonging to relatively recent
times, but executed before the advent of historic civilization to the regions where
they are found. A general resemblance among them suggests a common heritage of
traditions from the hoariest antiquity, and throws light on the probable character of
the transition from barbaric to civilized architecture.
PREHISTORIC MONUMENTS. These monuments vary widely as well as in
excellence; some of them belong to Roman or even Christian times; others to a much
remoter period. They are divided into two principal classes, the megalithic structures
and lake dwellings. The latter class may be dismissed with the briefest mention. It
comprises a considerable number of very primitive houses or huts built on wooden
piles in the lakes of Switzerland and several other countries in both hemispheres, and
forming in some cases villages of no mean size. Such villages, built over the water for
protection from attack, are mentioned by the writers of antiquity and portrayed on
Assyrian reliefs. The objects found in them reveal an incipient but almost stationary
civilization, extending back from three thousand to five thousand years or more, and
lasting through the ages of stone and bronze down into historic times.
The megalithic remains of Europe and Asia are far more important. They are very
widely distributed, and consist in most cases of great blocks of stone arranged in
rows, circles, or avenues, sometimes with huge lintels resting upon them. Upright
stones without lintels are called menhirs; standing in pairs with lintels they are
known as dolmens; the circles are called cromlechs. Some of the stones are of gigantic
size, some roughly hewn into shape; others left as when quarried. Their age and
purpose have been much discussed without reaching positive results. It is probable
that, like the lake dwellings, they cover a long range of time, reaching from the dawn
of recorded history some thousands of years back into the unknown past, and that
they were erected by races which have disappeared before the migrations to which
Europe owes her present populations. That most of them were in some way
connected with the worship of these prehistoric peoples is generally admitted; but
whether as temples, tombs, or memorials of historical or mythical events cannot, in
all cases, be positively asserted. They were not dwellings or palaces, and very few
were even enclosed buildings. They are imposing by the size and number of their
immense stones, but show no sign of advanced art, or of conscious striving after
beauty of design. The small number of "carved stones," bearing singular ornamental
patterns, symbolic or mystical rather than decorative in intention, really tends to
prove this statement rather than to controvert it. It is not impossible that the
dolmens were generally intended to be covered by mounds of earth. This would
group them with the tumuli referred to below, and point to a sepulchral purpose in
their erection. Some antiquaries, Fergusson among them, contend that many of the
European circles and avenues were intended as battle-monuments or trophies.
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There are also walls of great antiquity in various parts of Europe, intended for
fortification; the most important of these in Greece and Italy will be referred to in
later chapters. They belong to a more advanced art, some of them even deserving to
be classed among works of archaic architecture.
The tumuli, or burial mounds, which form so large a part of the prehistoric remains
of both continents, are interesting to the architect only as revealing the prototypes of
the pyramids of Egypt and the subterranean tombs of Mycenæ and other early Greek
centres. The piling of huge cairns or commemorative heaps of stone is known from
the Scriptures and other ancient writings to have been a custom of the greatest
antiquity. The pyramids and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus are the most imposing
and elaborate outgrowths of this practice, of which the prehistoric tumuli are the
simpler manifestations.
These crude and elementary products of undeveloped civilizations have no place,
however, in any list of genuine architectural works. They belong rather to the domain
of archæology and ethnology, and have received this brief mention only as revealing
the beginnings of the builder's art, and the wide gap that separates them from that
genuine architecture which forms the subject of the following chapters.
MONUMENTS: The most celebrated in England are at Avebury, an avenue, large and
small circles, barrows, and the great tumuli of Bartlow and Silbury "Hills;" at Stonehenge,
on Salisbury Plain, great megalithic circles and many barrows; "Sarsen stones" at
Ashdown; tumuli, dolmens, chambers, and circles in Derbyshire. In Ireland, many cairns
and circles. In Scotland, circles and barrows in the Orkney Islands. In France, Carnac and
Lokmariaker in Brittany are especially rich in dolmens, circles, and avenues. In
Scandinavia, Germany, and Italy, in India and in Africa, are many similar remains.
Table of Contents:
  1. PRIMITIVE AND PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE:EARLY BEGINNINGS
  2. EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE:LAND AND PEOPLE, THE MIDDLE EMPIRE
  3. EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE—Continued:TEMPLES, CAPITALS
  4. CHALDÆAN AND ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE:ORNAMENT, MONUMENTS
  5. PERSIAN, LYCIAN AND JEWISH ARCHITECTURE:Jehovah
  6. GREEK ARCHITECTURE:GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS, THE DORIC
  7. GREEK ARCHITECTURE—Continued:ARCHAIC PERIOD, THE TRANSITION
  8. ROMAN ARCHITECTURE:LAND AND PEOPLE, GREEK INFLUENCE
  9. ROMAN ARCHITECTURE—Continued:IMPERIAL ARCHITECTURE
  10. EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE:INTRODUCTORY, RAVENNA
  11. BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE:DOMES, DECORATION, CARVED DETAILS
  12. SASSANIAN AND MOHAMMEDAN ARCHITECTURE:ARABIC ARCHITECTURE
  13. EARLY MEDIÆVAL ARCHITECTURE:LOMBARD STYLE, FLORENCE
  14. EARLY MEDIÆVAL ARCHITECTURE.—Continued:EARLY CHURCHES, GREAT BRITAIN
  15. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE:STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLES, RIBBED VAULTING
  16. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE:STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT
  17. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN:GENERAL CHARACTER
  18. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN GERMANY, THE NETHERLANDS, AND SPAIN
  19. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY:CLIMATE AND TRADITION, EARLY BUILDINGS.
  20. EARLY RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY:THE CLASSIC REVIVAL, PERIODS
  21. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY—Continued:BRAMANTE’S WORKS
  22. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE:THE TRANSITION, CHURCHES
  23. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS
  24. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GERMANY, SPAIN, AND PORTUGAL
  25. THE CLASSIC REVIVALS IN EUROPE:THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
  26. RECENT ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE:MODERN CONDITIONS, FRANCE
  27. ARCHITECTURE IN THE UNITED STATES:GENERAL REMARKS, DWELLINGS
  28. ORIENTAL ARCHITECTURE:INTRODUCTORY NOTE, CHINESE ARCHITECTURE
  29. APPENDIX.