> 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

> 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.