Was Vitruvius right about the origin of architecture? He wrote in De Architectura:

New archaeological discoveries have shown that timber construction, or 'a better species of huts', is extremely ancient and emerged at the dawn of communities and language. These discoveries may be found in a series of interlinked research projects at the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. One group of archaeologists, led by Professor Larry Barham, in research into palaeolithic timber construction, described what they believe to be the earliest known wooden structure, discovered at Kalambo Falls, Zambia. The timber structure consisted of 2 beams notched, presumably to make a corner of a rectangular enclosure. There was evidence of fire as well as working with tools on the beams.

This was a very unusual find. Wood does not usually last long, not least half a million years; the survival and discovery of archaeological sites is largely by chance, and the interpretation of evidence highly speculative. Timber construction almost half a million years old means that these artefacts predate our species. The beginning of our species, homo sapiens, is believed to be approximately 300,000 years ago, so it is likely that this timber structure was made by a predecessor species, perhaps homo erectus.

A second research project, led by Professor John Gowlett, charted evidence of fire and cooked food at the same site. Professor Gowlett argued that homo erectus must have controlled fire for food, as hominid digestion cannot sustain life on a raw diet, and for protection from wild animals, as hominids were not adapted to climbing trees.

Further interpretations of these discoveries would support the belief that fire and shelter were essential elements of language. Professor Robin Dunbar, in his research project 'From Lucy to Language: The Archaeology of the Social Brain' argues that the larger brains of homo sapiens "are thus largely about the management of relations in a complex social environment... and language also appears to have evolved as part of this constellation of factors". Timber huts gave spatial form to the social environment.

What woud be the likely completed form of this fragment? Although he could not possibly have known that he was doing so, Vitruvius provided the answer:

Vitruvius is describing something that contemporaries during the 1st century BC may have, in turn, described to him in person. Pontus was a kingdom along the eastern Black Sea coast, in which Colchis was a coastal region. Colchis had been well-known to the Mycenaeans in the Bronze Age, and had been colonised by Greeks in the 6th century BC. It was absorbed into the Roman Empire in 64 BC [3]. Greeks relied on the import of timber from all over the Mediterranean and Black Seas, due to the lack of timber in Greece itself, and this was one incentive to making temples from stone, which was abundant, reserving wood for ships.

The form of construction described by Vitruvius is often called log cabin construction. Well-preserved examples may be found in Russia, Scandinavia and the Alps. It is conventionally assumed to be archaeologically recent - from, at the earliest, the Bronze Age, as this is when readily identifiable remains may be found. It survived as described by Vitruvius into the early 20th century. There is no implication that there was any direct historical link between the Palaeolithic site in Africa and the Hellenic site in the Caucasus, but the continuity of the construction raises the question of whether it could be innate.

If log cabins are actually innate, then their construction involved both a social context, like language, and technical knowledge, like making tools. Ancient Greeks conceptualised these innate atributes: architecture made khôra (Ancient Greek χώρα), or social space, and was made through techne (Ancient Greek τέχνη), art or craft, and poiesis (Ancient Greek ποίησις) making something new. We can see architecture progressing together with language, from primitive grunting to the sophisticated language of Ancient Greece.

These log cabins were obviously not the origin of the Doric Order as they were solid wall, not columns. The 'arbours made of boughs of trees' would be theorised as the 'primitive hut' by Enlightenment theorists such as Marc-Antoine Laugier, to demonstrate its origin. Greek architecture was being rediscovered at the same time by architects, notably by Robert Wood - The ruins of Palmyra (London 1753) and The ruins of Balbec (London 1757) and James Stuart and Nicholas Revett - The Antiquities of Athens (London 1762/1789/1794).

Laugier was not speculating on the origin of ordinary buildings, but on what was understood as architecture in the 18th century: "great churches, palaces of princes and public buildings", or what Vitruvius would call public buildings. Architects and architectural theorists, particularly in France, were looking for a rational basis for the Orders, which had defined public architecture since the Renaissance. In fact the peristyle, or row of columns around a solid core, which characterised temple architecture in Greece, became linked symbolically to the virtues of democracy. Possibly the last Classical peripteral temple was the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, completed in 1922. [4]

Historians of Greek architecture show that construction in stone developed at the end of the 7th century BC during the rebirth of Hellenic culture after the collapse of Bronze Age cultures such as Mycenae. This was the same period as the colonisation of Colchis by Greek settlers, with access to the abundant timber of the coastal plain. It seems implausible that the complex rules of the Doric Order would have been rehearsed in timber beforehand, especially as timber is so different structurally. There is no evidence of a developed architecture in timber during that time, and the Doric Order seems to have emerged quite suddenly in stone in the 6th century BC. On the other hand the symbolic content, expressed though mimesis, might refer to mythical examples of early timber temples and thus representative of an ideal social order. A. W. Lawrence believes that the form of the Doric temple, a rectangular form surrounded by columns with little interior space, was an Hellenic response to the landscape of enclosed valleys in Greece, as opposed to, for example, strongly axial architecture in Egypt. [5]

While Laugier's theory was absolutely plausible, and in fact defined architectural theory on the subject, he apparently got it wrong: sophisticated architecture came out of sophisticated societies. But that is a simplistic reading of Laugier: Enlightenment theorists were looking for the natural origin of sophisticated architecture. Enlightenment assumptions of the Orders did not have long to run after Laugier: they would be overturned in the 19th century, by architects such as Labrouste, whose Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève (Paris 1838-50) was the first public building in Paris without columns.

Some theorists belive that language developed not distinct from architecture but, in part, because of it. Why would architecture be considered a foundation of language? Paleoarchaeologists do not consider architecture to be of the same importance as tools, fire and language, the traditional triad for the formation of social groupings. The architectural historian John Onians asserted, however, that certain concepts expressed in language actually came from architecture:

The new archaeological discoveries show that the description of the birth of architecture given by Vitruvius in De Architectura is entirely plausible. Furthermore, it is clear that architecture emerged with communities and language, and was one of the defining characterists of our species, homo sapiens. The earliest buildings, or 'better species of huts' were not 'primitive huts' but log cabins, a form of construction that lasted into the early 20th century.

Log cabins were instrumental in the development of the North West Territories in Canada. The District of Assinaboia was absorbed into Saskatchewan in 1905, and the town founded in 1912.

An example of an izba, a vernacular rural dwelling in log cabin construction, survived at at the Rozhdestvensky Convent in central Moscow at least until its renovation in 1993.

Thomas Deckker
London 2024