Syria – EARTH ARCHITECTURE

July 30, 2009

Syrian Beehive Houses

Designed for the desert climate, the beehive homes keep the heat out in a few ways. Their thick mud brick walls trap in the cool and keep the sun out as well (beehive homes have very few, if any, windows). The high domes of the beehive houses also collect the hot air, moving it away from the residents sleeping at the bottom of the house.

Inside, its high dome serves to collect the hotter air, and outside to shed rainfall instantly, before the brick can absorb it and crumble. Its thick roof-cum-wall is an excellent low-velocity heat-exchanger, and keeps interior temperatures between 85° and 75° F. while outside noon-to-midnight extremes range from 140° to 60°.

October 15, 2007

World’s Oldest Mural is on a Mud Brick Wall

French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old work of art in northern Syria which is the oldest known wall painting, even though it looks like a work by a modernist. Rectangles dominate the ancient painting, which formed part of an adobe circular wall of a large mud brick house with a wooden roof. The dating makes the designs at least 1500 years older than wall paintings at Çatalhöyük, the famous 9500-year-old Turkish village, among one of the first towns.

December 16, 2005

Earth Ammunition

In the ruins of an ancient mud-brick city in northeastern Syria, archaeologists have uncovered what they say is substantial evidence of a fierce battle fought there in about 3500 B.C., which includes the discovery of 120 clay balls that were meant to be fired from slings, as well as 1,200 smaller “bullets.”