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Might have been their only way of hardening the clay walls. We do it still to this day, except we burn the bricks before building the walls. Lacking modern buil

by emsign 3y ago

Might have been their only way of hardening the clay walls. We do it still to this day, except we burn the bricks before building the walls. Lacking modern building techniques like that and like mortar, burning the walls in situ was probably pretty neat back then and gave them such an advantage that cutting down hundreds of trees seemed worth it.

thaumasiotes 3y ago
> Might have been their only way of hardening the clay walls. We do it still to this day, except we burn the bricks before building the walls. Lacking modern building techniques like that That's not exactly a modern building technique. Ancient Mesopotamian wall inscriptions sometimes brag about how the bricks in the wall have been baked. (Making for a higher-quality wall; presumably sun-dried clay was still in use for non-prestige projects.)
- HarryHirsch 3y ago
  You burn bricks before they are assembled into a building, not after. In the American Southwest you do encounter prestige buildings from the end of the 19th century proudly proclaiming they were built in brick when the rest of the village was built from adobe.
  - mjhay 3y ago
    There is the modern counterexample of ceramic houses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_house
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    The firing is energetically expensive, and doesn't really end up creating a notably longer lived result. Things last in the southwest because of the low moisture levels, whether they are fired or not. The "prestige" of brick in the southwest was all about having the money to pay for fired bricks, not really their superiority as a building material.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > You burn bricks before they are assembled into a building, not after. Yes, obviously. As I just mentioned, this is a technique that dates back several thousand years.
pessimizer 3y ago
> Evgeniy Yuryevich Krichevski, a Russian archaeologist, took a more pragmatic approach. He suggested the prehistoric peoples of Eastern Europe weren’t destroying their structures so much as they were reinforcing them. According to him, the heat of the flames would have hardened the clay walls into a ceramic surface [https://daily.jstor.org/three-technologies-ceramics/ https://daily.jstor.org/three-technologies-ceramics/], while the smoke would have fumigated the living space. https://daily.jstor.org/burned-house-mystery-why-did-this-ancient-culture-torch-its-own-homes-every-60-years/ https://daily.jstor.org/burned-house-mystery-why-did-this-an...
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> Might have been their only way of hardening the clay walls. We do it still to this day, except we burn the bricks before building the walls. Adobe techniques, found in many different parts of the world, get along just fine without baking the clay walls, and the results can last for hundreds of years. That said, I had an interesting conversation a couple of years ago with the head of a local (Santa Fe) company that specializes in historic adobe repair and restoration. They were called in to look at a monastery (either in the Arabic world or somewhere in S. America - I don't recall) which had just been "burned to the ground" in a fire. The walls were still standing even if the wooden roof beams, doors and windows were all done. The monks were worried about the structural integrity of the walls, but this guy assured them, given the now-obviously high-fired nature of the surface of the walls, that if anything the building was likely now stronger than ever.
- b112 3y ago
  Adobe techniques, found in many different parts of the world, get along just fine without baking the clay walls, and the results can last for hundreds of years. Clay walls of cities and forts, where invaders are trying to break them, and rip them down?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    You mean like Jericho, for example? Or Rayen, in Iran: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Rayen_Castle_1.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Rayen_Ca...
    - b112 3y ago
      Excellent, thanks.

by emsign 3y ago

thaumasiotes 3y ago

> Might have been their only way of hardening the clay walls. We do it still to this day, except we burn the bricks before building the walls. Lacking modern building techniques like that That's not exactly a modern building technique. Ancient Mesopotamian wall inscriptions sometimes brag about how the bricks in the wall have been baked. (Making for a higher-quality wall; presumably sun-dried clay was still in use for non-prestige projects.)

HarryHirsch 3y ago
You burn bricks before they are assembled into a building, not after. In the American Southwest you do encounter prestige buildings from the end of the 19th century proudly proclaiming they were built in brick when the rest of the village was built from adobe.
- mjhay 3y ago
  There is the modern counterexample of ceramic houses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_house
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  The firing is energetically expensive, and doesn't really end up creating a notably longer lived result. Things last in the southwest because of the low moisture levels, whether they are fired or not. The "prestige" of brick in the southwest was all about having the money to pay for fired bricks, not really their superiority as a building material.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > You burn bricks before they are assembled into a building, not after. Yes, obviously. As I just mentioned, this is a technique that dates back several thousand years.

pessimizer 3y ago

> Evgeniy Yuryevich Krichevski, a Russian archaeologist, took a more pragmatic approach. He suggested the prehistoric peoples of Eastern Europe weren’t destroying their structures so much as they were reinforcing them. According to him, the heat of the flames would have hardened the clay walls into a ceramic surface [https://daily.jstor.org/three-technologies-ceramics/ https://daily.jstor.org/three-technologies-ceramics/], while the smoke would have fumigated the living space. https://daily.jstor.org/burned-house-mystery-why-did-this-ancient-culture-torch-its-own-homes-every-60-years/ https://daily.jstor.org/burned-house-mystery-why-did-this-an...

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

> Might have been their only way of hardening the clay walls. We do it still to this day, except we burn the bricks before building the walls. Adobe techniques, found in many different parts of the world, get along just fine without baking the clay walls, and the results can last for hundreds of years. That said, I had an interesting conversation a couple of years ago with the head of a local (Santa Fe) company that specializes in historic adobe repair and restoration. They were called in to look at a monastery (either in the Arabic world or somewhere in S. America - I don't recall) which had just been "burned to the ground" in a fire. The walls were still standing even if the wooden roof beams, doors and windows were all done. The monks were worried about the structural integrity of the walls, but this guy assured them, given the now-obviously high-fired nature of the surface of the walls, that if anything the building was likely now stronger than ever.

b112 3y ago
Adobe techniques, found in many different parts of the world, get along just fine without baking the clay walls, and the results can last for hundreds of years. Clay walls of cities and forts, where invaders are trying to break them, and rip them down?
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  You mean like Jericho, for example? Or Rayen, in Iran: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Rayen_Castle_1.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Rayen_Ca...
  - b112 3y ago
    Excellent, thanks.