The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c8.2

v1.c8.2

Considerable difference of opinion exist as to the form which was first adopted by man for the formation of his dwelling. The models he had before him to work upon were natural caves or caverns, which were all more or less rounded, and deficient in sharp well-marked angles, and they led to the theory that the earliest habitations of the human race were circular in plan and rounded in form. In support of this opinion, it is said that the dwellings of the ancient Gauls were circular huts built with wood, and lined with mud; and the pile huts of Switzerland were of a similar nature.¹ On the other hand, nothing was likely to prove more troublesome to primitive builders than circular designs, and the earliest examples of dwellings still extant in America, Africa, and Oceania, are mostly rectangular, i.e. those houses which are intended to be permanent and fixed, have straight sides, and rectangular corners, while those which are intended to be easily moved about, are more or less circular. Ascending from wood, wattle and mud to bricks and stones, this view of the question appears to receive peculiar confirmation; for the oldest houses and temples were, with a few rare exceptions, straight-lined in their ground plan, and perpendicular for at least a part of their height. The oldest lithic monuments of human art still extant, are the Pyramids of Egypt, and their chambers bear out this opinion in every particular. They are all rectangular enclosures with upright walls. The temples of that country were also of the same character, and the palaces of Assyria and Babylon did not anywhere depart from this rule. Some of the Pelasgic tombs in Greece enclosed circular chambers; but as they were erected long after the time of the first ten dynasties of Manetho, and produced at a period when the art of building had been brought to a comparatively high state of improvement, they cannot controvert the theory regarding the outline of the earliest buildings. It may be stated, however, that while in buildings the circular form is difficult, in graves, it is the simplest, and most readily produced, nature helping in a few years to complete where the art of man fails to attain the object, and the transition from the circular to the rectangular plan, as in the Pyramids, implies a considerable advance in civilization and architectural ingenuity.