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Homes had now become permanent. Initially they would be a rectangular shape but by about 3000BC they had become round. Unlike most of your homes, they only had one room, one door and no windows. You could probably argue that they had central heating but that was only because they would build a big fire in the middle of the house to keep them warm and cook their food on. The smoke from the fire would escape through a hole in the roof. The roof would usually be made of grass or hay so there could be a problem if the flames from the fire got too hot. If lots of stone was nearby, the people would build the walls of their homes of stone. Otherwise the walls would be branches twisted together and covered with a paste called daub. The twisted branches were known as wattle so the houses were wattle and daub. The paste was a mixture of earth, clay, sand and animal poo. Parents probably didn’t need to tell the children to keep their fingers off the walls. Oh, the air freshener had not yet been invented either. The homes would have been quite draughty although a piece of animal skin might have been hung over the otherwise open doorway. A wattle and daub fence might be used to enclose the house and a gate could be shut to keep the animals in. A small area, either inside or outside the wall, would be used to grow crops, often wheat and barley.
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