Chapter 19 Qs

Houses can tell you a lot about a region. One of these things include the climate. For example, if you live in a place where it snows a lot your roof will be sloped so the weight of the snow won't cave in the roof. Another example of this are houses that have a sod-covered roof, this method is used to conserve warmth during the cold winter. The materials that the dwellings are made out of also tells a lot about the region. For example, between the wattle dwellings of the equatorial rainforest areas and the earthen construction of the drier subtropical zones grass and brush are the most common building materials. Also, where it is really cold and snowy and the only materials you have is ice then you are probably going to have an igloo for a home. Your house will be built depending on what resources you have available. The third thing you can tell just by the house is the social status of the person. For example, some houses only have one room for every function but others that are in a better social place have a separate room for thier living room, their kitchen, bedrooms, ect.

Different settlement patterns occur because of migration. When people migrate they carry the notions of how a home should be planned and constructed with them. But in new environments those ideas may need to be modified. At first clusters of people lived together because they could not support a big population of people and they were always moving from place to place following the animals they hunted. Then they started growing from hamlets because they began to farm and grow more food to support a bigger population, to villages, to towns then cities, then megacities where we now have technology, new medicine methods, more hygiene, agriculture, ect. It is difficult to trace diffused building patterns because migrationhas occured causing new methods to be shown all around the world. A lot of dwellings have also been destroyed natural disasters, wars, ect.

Different types of building materials include wood, brick, stone, wattle, grass and brush, ice and more. Wood is found almost all around the world, for example, forests. Wood is a great protection from heat and there is a lot of it. Brick are made from different raw materials and they provide a good protection from both heat and cold. Stones are natural, it is not as common as either wood or brick, but they are abundant in many places. Wattles are houses built from poles, sticks, bamboo, bark, and leaves so the materials to built these kinds of homes are available in many places. Grass and Brush are the most common building materials. Ice blocks are used in cold parts of the world and they provide shelter againsts the harsh winds. Some building materials are far from their source areas because transportation has made it easier to get them from one place to another. Since transportation has made is easier and the materials are more practical than other ones that are available in a certain area, the demand for them has increased.