or of clay and straw; they were rectangular in shape, 

 divided into two compartments connected by a foot- 

 bridge of three beams laid side by side. The floors 

 were of rounded wood, and the walls of piles split in 

 half. Sometimes several floors rose one above another 

 divided by thick layers of clay. 



Such, in brief, are the main features of one of the 

 earliest homes of mankind. We, of the favored races, 

 enjoying our highly developed dwellings, are apt to 

 refer these ways of living to a very remote past. But, 

 as has been said, to a considerable portion of the human 

 race the terms Stone and Iron Age are still applicable. 

 The hut of the Eskimo, the wigwam of the American 

 Indian; the habitation of the African savage and the 

 nomadic tribe of Central Asia, afford much infor- 

 mation as to the dwellings of our primitive ancestors. 

 Even the Swiss lake dweller, in whose difficult struggle 

 for existence we take perhaps more interest than in 

 that of any other primitive man, could he come back 

 to-day, would feel at home in some parts of Oceanica 

 and Africa. 



Until within the last half century the style of archi- 

 tecture as well as the material used in building, even 

 in city dwellings, was largely determined by the natural 

 products at hand, and aside from the comparatively 

 few dwellings of the wealthy, this is still a determining 

 factor to a large extent. The Eskimo, utilizing the 

 material at hand, builds a house of snow; the Egyp- 

 tian uses reeds and rushes; the Greeks and Romans, 

 living in a sparsely wooded country, built stone houses; 

 the Assyrians, having but little stone at hand, learned 



