Neolithic architecture

[citation needed] Architectural advances are an important part of the Neolithic period (10,000-2000 BC), during which some of the major innovations of human history occurred.

[1] The Neolithic people in the Levant, Anatolia, Syria, northern Mesopotamia and central Asia were great builders, utilising mud-brick to construct houses and villages.

Early archaeologists like Ferdinand Keller thought they formed artificial islands, much like the Scottish crannogs, but today it is clear that the majority of settlements was located on the shores of lakes and were only inundated later on.

[citation needed] In Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine, Neolithic settlements included wattle-and-daub structures with thatched roofs and floors made of logs covered in clay.

Neolithic people in the British Isles built long barrows and chamber tombs for their dead and causewayed camps, henges and cursus monuments.

The megalithic structures of Ġgantija, Tarxien, Ħaġar Qim, Mnajdra, Ta' Ħaġrat, Skorba and smaller satellite buildings on Malta and Gozo, first appearing in their current form around 3600 BC, represent one of the earliest examples of a fully developed architectural statement in which aesthetics, location, design and engineering fused into free-standing monuments.

At the Ħal-Saflieni Hypogeum, the inhabitants of Malta carved out an underground burial complex in which surface architectural elements were used to embellish a series of chambers and entrances.