History of architecture 1 - Lecture-5 part 1

1. 23/12/2022 1
Lecture 5 part 1

2. Early Cultures
2500 BCE
History and Theory of Architecture (1) - 0902241
23/12/2022 2
Lecture 5 part 1
University of Jordan
Faculty of Engineering
Department of Architecture
By the beginning of the third millennium BCE, the various river-
oriented civilizations were primed for rapid cultural development.

3. The five principal cultural hubs:
China
Egypt
Mesopotamia
Margiana The Indus
23/12/2022 3
Lecture 5 part 1

4.  Egypt was famous by a consistent set of religious traditions
because it was less prone to invasions by well-armed
enemies.
 Furthermore, due to the seasonality of its agriculture, farm
workers could be summoned by the pharaohs to perform
forced labor on building projects
Egypt
23/12/2022 4
Lecture 5 part 1

5.  Zoser’s temple complex, built on an unprecedented scale, was one of the
first monumental stone buildings in the world.
23/12/2022 5
Lecture 5 part 1

6. Mesopotamia
 Cities, dedicated to various deities, were political entities in their own right.
 Irrigation canals placed a great deal of wealth in the hands of the new generation of rulers,
who operated in close alliance with a priestly class ruling out of temples that were built as
artificial mountains rising in colourful terraces above the plains from the center of cities.
 Unlike in Egypt, the Mesopotamian irrigation system was more difficult to maintain and
required greater coordination.
23/12/2022 6
Lecture 5 part 1

7. Indus
 The cities built there were developed to a high degree of complexity in terms of planning and
water drainage.
 Instead of a ziggurat or pyramid at the center of the town, there were huge public baths, such
as the one at Mohenjo-Daro.
23/12/2022 7
Lecture 5 part 1
Mohenjo-Daro.

8.  There was extensive trade with:
Mesopotamia, up the Persian Gulf, and with Margiana.
 Archaeologists call the area zone of interconnection: from Mesopotamia to
the Indus, and from the Caspian Sea to Arabia.
23/12/2022 8
Lecture 5 part 1

9.  The fourth civilizational zone developed around the
Oxus River and is known as the Adronovo Culture.
 It was based at first around small villages, but here
two large cities eventually developed (in today’s
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) that were much more
urban and socially organized than previously thought.
 The cities were not only of great size but were
designed with great geometrical precision.
23/12/2022 9
Lecture 5 part 1
Margiana

10.  In China, the first recorded dynasty, the Xia dynasty, emerged around 2100 BCE.
 Nonetheless, we still find a horizontal civilization of villages and towns unified around common
ritual centers.
23/12/2022 10
Lecture 5 part 1
China

11.  In Europe we see the impact of the Beaker People, Known for their advanced metalworking
skill, they left their traces in various locations.
 They arrived in England, where they encountered such sites as Stonehenge, which they took
over and redesigned, orienting it to the sun rather than to the moon.
23/12/2022 11
Lecture 5 part 1

12.  In the Americas, the Andean population inhabited a thin sliver of coastline
between the Pacific Ocean and a desert.
 Though these communities could easily have become a forgotten niche culture,
the currents of the Pacific Ocean, with their rich bounty of marine life, helped
sustain settled life until the inhabitants learned to tame the rivers descending
from the Andes mountains by canalization and terracing.
 Very recently, archaeologists have dated a large ceremonial complex above the
Supe Valley in the Peruvian Andes to about 2750 BCE. This discovery has
overturned Andean chronology and required the dating of large-scale
ceremonial architecture to a much earlier time period than it had been
previously thought to belong to. Large tracts of Andean sites have still not been
explored and carbondated, and their stories remain to be told.
23/12/2022 12
Lecture 5 part 1

13. 23/12/2022 13
Lecture 5 part 1

14. 23/12/2022
Lecture 5 part 1 14

15. 3500 BCE 2500 BCE 1500 BCE
Late Neolithic Period
ca. 5000–2500 BCE
Early Bronze Age
ca. 3000–2000 BCE
Ghaggar-Hakra Civilization
2600–1800 BCE
23/12/2022 15
Lecture 5 part 1

16. Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa prosper.
ca. 2600–1900 BCE
Dholavira
ca. 3000–2000 BCE
Ghaggar-Hakra Civilization
23/12/2022 16
Lecture 5 part 1

17. Mesopotamia
Early Dynastic Period
ca. 2900–2350 BCE
Akkadian Dynasty
ca. 2350–2150 BCE
Old Assyrian Period in the north;
Old Babylonian Period in the south
ca. 2000–1600 BCE
Palace of Naram-Sin
ca. 2170 BCE
Third Dynasty of Ur
ca. 2100–2000 BCE
Ziggurat at Ur
ca. 2100 BCE
23/12/2022 17
Lecture 5 part 1

18. Gonur
ca. 2200 BCE
Margiana
ca. 2200–1700 BCE
23/12/2022 18
Lecture 5 part 1

19. Egypt
Old Kingdom
ca. 2649–2150 BCE
Egypt: First Intermediate Period
ca. 2150–2030 BCE
Middle Kingdom
ca. 2030–1640 BCE
Second Intermediate Period
ca. 1640–1550 BCE
Step Pyramid of Zoser
ca. 2750 BCE
Bent Pyramid
ca. 2600 BCE
Great Pyramid of Khufu
ca. 2590 BCE
23/12/2022 19
Lecture 5 part 1

20.  Building of megalithic temples
ca. 3500–2500 BCE
 Brittany and British Isles: Megalithic building cultures
ca. 4200–2000 BCE
Stonehenge
Begun ca. 3000 BCE
23/12/2022 20
Lecture 5 part 1

21.  3100 BCE
Mythic base date of the
Maya long-count calendar
 North and Central Andes: Early Ceramic Cultures
ca. 4000–1800 BCE
El Paraiso
ca. 1800 BCE
Caral
ca. 2627–2000 BCE
23/12/2022 21
Lecture 5 part 1

22. The Indus Ghaggar-Hakra Civilization
 Around 2500 BCE, the Mehrgarh people moved down from the Baluchistan Hills and settled in
the river valleys that define the eastern edge of the South Asian subcontinent—those of the
Indus and the now dried-up Ghaggar-Hakra rivers.
 The Indus/Ghaggar-Hakra region was the first urban civilization in the true sense of the word.
23/12/2022 22
Lecture 5 part 1

23. The Indus Ghaggar-Hakra Civilization
 Over a thousand cities and towns have been discovered spread over a quarter of a million
square miles, an area roughly equivalent to modern-day France.
 Though these cities were distant from each other, they shared a common language and a
standardized system of weights and measures.
23/12/2022 23
Lecture 5 part 1

24. Quick information:
 The inhabitants seemed to have called themselves
something akin to Meluhha.
 That, at least, is what the contemporaneous
Mesopotamians, with whom they traded
extensively both by northern land routes and by
ship through the Arabian Gulf, called them.
 From the Indus comes the name India. In ancient
Sanskrit, the Indus was called the Sindhu.
 In Central Asian languages, Sindhu became
Hindhu, which then became Indus in Greek.
23/12/2022 24
Lecture 5 part 1

25. Quick information:
 The Indus civilization was part of an interconnected zone that extended across western Asia and
even into Egypt.
 The area between Mesopotamia and the Indus was also urbanized with cities such as Tepe Yaha and
Jiroft, in the once fertile and expansive Soghun Valley.
23/12/2022 25
Lecture 5 part 1

26.  The four phases of development the Indus
Ghaggar-hakra civilization went through:
1. The urbanization of the Ghaggar-Hakra River valley, ca. 2800 BCE
2. The rising dominance of the four cities— Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro,
Rakhigarhi, and Ganweriwala—ca. 2500 BCE
3. The new urbanization of areas south and east, ca. 2200 BCE
4. The postdecline reurbanization of the Ghaggar-Hakra River, ca. 1700
BCE
23/12/2022 26
Lecture 5 part 1

27.  Moving close to the rivers:
1. Enabled the Indus people to expand their agricultural production.
But
2. they had to cope with the challenge of building near rivers consistently
prone to flash flooding and sudden route changes.
 Bricks were used to construct huge platforms over existing mounds to
make the bases for the cities.
 Large-scale standardized burnt-brick production was key.
23/12/2022 27
Lecture 5 part 1

28.  Walls were erected in part for defensive reasons but also to keep out
floodwaters.
 And most importantly, elaborate interconnected drainage
systems were designed to disperse storm waters.
 A central drain under the main gate of Harappa still stands in place.
 Nonetheless, the Indus flooded many times, each flood burying the city
under a thick layer of silt.
 Harappa was rebuilt at the same spot more than seven times. It is
thought to have had a population of about fifty thousand.
23/12/2022 28
Lecture 5 part 1

29.  The largest cities were affiliated with outlying smaller cities.
 There were also specialized cities, such:
a ports and mining towns.
23/12/2022 29
Lecture 5 part 1

30.  Dholavira, located on an island in the Rann of
Kutch, had to solve the opposite hydro-
engineering problem as Harappa’s.
 Because the city sits in the middle of a vast delta
in a very dry area, the issue was not keeping
floodwater out, but ensuring that enough water
could be harvested for the dry season.
23/12/2022 30
Lecture 5 part 1
Dholavira

31.  The solution was a series of strategically located dams and holding
tanks that allowed excess water to escape during a flood. Once the tanks
were full, additional water was held in huge rectangular, shallow man-made
lakes that surrounded the city.
23/12/2022 31
Lecture 5 part 1

32.  In Lothal, a port city, water was let through a sluice into a vast rectangular
tank that some speculate functioned as a dry dock for seafaring vessels.
23/12/2022 32
Lecture 5 part 1

33. The largest cities were divided into:
1. An upper town:
which was on the highest ground.
had large palaces.
exclusive walls.
ceremonial spaces.
2. A lower town:
which had most of the housing.
23/12/2022 33
Lecture 5 part 1

34.  The upper town usually had its own wall within the general wall that
surrounded the whole city.
 At Dholavira the boundary wall was over 30 feet thick. Burials were often
under mounds just outside the city. Road networks were rectilinear. Though
these cities clearly had a social hierarchy with a strong ruling class (confirmed
by the fact that they were divided into sections with larger and smaller
houses), there is little evidence of a centralized kingship, as there was in
contemporaneous Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China.
23/12/2022 34
Lecture 5 part 1

35. At Dholavira:
 The boundary wall was over 30 feet thick.
 Burials were often under mounds just outside the city.
 Road networks were rectilinear.
Though these cities clearly had a social hierarchy with a strong ruling class (confirmed by the fact
that they were divided into sections with larger and smaller houses).
There are no large temples, castles, or palaces.
23/12/2022 35
Lecture 5 part 1

36.  As to their religious system, terracotta
seals show a plethora of supernatural
animals—in particular unicorns.
 There is also the depiction of a proto-
Shiva-like divinity sometimes shown
sitting in the lotus position.
 He wears bull horns on his head and
seems to be worshipped by animals of
all sorts.
23/12/2022 36
Lecture 5 part 1

37.  There is also a proliferation of
sculptural figures dedicated to fertility
and procreation. But there are no
centralized religious structures.
23/12/2022 37
Lecture 5 part 1

38. Early in the second millennium BCE,
the Ghaggar-Hakra begun to dry up.
The reasons are debated, but:
it seems an earthquake in the Himalayas caused one of its major tributaries to
change course and drain into the Indus, depleting the Ghaggar-Hakra.
 Its waters collected in an inland lake that spawned a successful maritime
community around its shores.
23/12/2022 38
Lecture 5 part 1

39.  Subsequently, the lake, too, dried up,
bringing about the final phase: the abandonment of the entire Indus Ghaggar-
Hakra region.
Where the people went is still debated, but the majority probably dispersed
eastward to the plains of the Ganges River. Some, however, may have gone
westward.
23/12/2022 39
Lecture 5 part 1

40. Mohenjo-Daro
 Mohenjo-Daro was the dominant city of the southern Indus.
 The Indus, which originates in the high Himalayas, is
frequently subject to ice floes and landslides that can hold
back its waters for a while but that eventually give way,
resulting in huge flash floods.
 To guard against these, the two largest building areas of
Mohenjo-Daro were raised high on a platform of bricks
designed to disperse the floodwaters through a series of
culverts. (The site of Mohenjo-Daro itself receives very little
rain.)
23/12/2022 40
Lecture 5 part 1

41. Mohenjo-Daro
 Under the main streets were drains running to
settling tanks, which could be accessed and
cleaned.
 Mohenjo-Daro’s neighborhoods were inward
looking.
 The main streets were lined with the largely
blank walls of houses.
 Even the secondary streets usually did not have
any major houses opening directly onto them.
23/12/2022 41
Lecture 5 part 1

42. 23/12/2022
Lecture 5 part 1 42
Urban fabric of Mohenjo-Daro

43. Mohenjo-Daro
 Accessible by alleys only, the houses were most
often faced into open courtyards, with the
larger ones often having two stories.
 The upper level built of wood.
 The number of rooms in houses varied from two
to more than twenty.
 A good number of the rooms contained wells,
and the larger ones had bathrooms and toilets
23/12/2022 43
Lecture 5 part 1

44. Thank you 
23/12/2022
Lecture 5 part 1 44