VI 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE DWELLING HOUSE 





TACITUS tells us that in his day the Germans 

 crouched in dens dug out of the earth, and if 

 this be the case, these people must have been 

 of the type that resolutely sets itself against all progress, 

 for the very first human beings of whom we find any 

 trace lived in precisely the same manner. The ear- 

 liest habitations of men were, in all probability, holes 

 dug in the earth and covered with the branches of 

 trees. Near Joigny in France, some of these dwellings 

 may still be seen. They are circular holes about fifty 

 feet in diameter and between sixteen and twenty feet 

 deep. At the bottom, in the center, was fixed the trunk 

 of a good-sized tree, the stem rising above the ground, 

 where branches plastered with clay formed the roof. 



These holes have been found in many parts of the 

 globe, and were probably more important to their 

 inhabitants as a hiding-place than as a shelter from the 

 cold, for everything points to the fact that during their 

 period of occupation the regions so inhabited enjoyed a 

 mild or warm climate. The men who lived in the La 

 Plata region of South America did indeed find a more 

 protective substitute for the arboreal roof in the shell of 

 the giant armadillo, or glyptodon, which was of a size 

 to house them in quite comfortably; but nowhere else 



