Mudbrick
Mud shaped in a mould and dried in the sun becomes the building material of the ancient world.
- When
- Known to
- ± 500 years
- Era
- Neolithic, Holocene
Sun-dried mudbrick appears in the Levant by around 8000 BCE and becomes the standard material from Anatolia to the Indus. It requires nothing but earth, water, straw and sun, it is made on site, and it insulates well against heat. Almost every early city is built from it — and because it dissolves back into mud, ruined settlements build up into the artificial mounds called tells, which is why so much of Near Eastern archaeology consists of digging through hills.