FIG. 41.—Hemispherical hut in straw of Zulu Kafirs.
(After Wood and other sources.)
Trying to secure themselves still better from the rain, the wind, and the sun, the first architects must have dug out the soil beneath the hut, as the Ainus, the Chukchi, the Kamtchadales still do at the present time, and this may have suggested the idea, as Tylor says,[194] of extending the vertical walls above the ground. The rushes, the little twigs, and the clods of potter’s clay or grass which were used at first to stop up the holes, eventually formed the walls, and the ancient hut thus raised was transformed into a dwelling a little more comfortable, having roof and walls. This was probably the origin of the hive-shaped huts of the Zulu Kafirs (Fig. [41]), and the cylindrical, conical-roofed huts of the Ovampos (Fig. [42]), and the Gauls of the time of Cæsar. Straw entering into the composition of the roof, and sometimes even the body of these dwellings, they may be styled straw huts or thatched huts. As to the quadrangular huts, they are transformed in the same manner into those little houses so characteristic of the Muchikongos, of French Congo and the coast of Guinea.[195] Among the peoples inhabiting the shores of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, from the Kamtchadales and the Indians of the north-west of America to the Maoris and the natives of Madagascar, the quadrangular houses are erected on poles even when they are far from water. The materials of which they are constructed are bamboos, reeds, and palm-leaves.[196]
FIG. 42.—Hut and granary of the Ovampos (South Africa).
(After Wood.)
In order to give solidity to the straw and reed-built walls, it must have been necessary at an early period to plaster them over with potter’s earth (Senegal, palafittes of the bronze age in Europe). In very dry countries it was seen that lumps of clay were able of themselves to form sufficiently solid walls, and this observation has led naturally enough to the making of sun-dried bricks, which were known to the Babylonians, to the Egyptians, and are still used to-day in the Sudan, in Turkestan, and Mexico.
