Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part three
Speaker 3: in our series on mud. Yes, mud, regular mud, wet soil,
Speaker 3: especially of the clay and silt sized particle variety. So
Speaker 3: in previous parts of the series we talked about what
Speaker 3: mud is, what its physical properties are, the role it
Speaker 3: played in the history of shaping Earth's continents, and how
Speaker 3: life colonized those continents. We talked in the previous episode
Speaker 3: about many animal behaviors that relate to mud. We talked
Speaker 3: about pigs wallowing in mud, Arnold Schwarzenegger wallowing and mud.
Speaker 3: We talked about mud skippers and other animals whose lives
Speaker 3: involve mud in one way or another. But of course,
Speaker 3: mud also plays a big role in human culture and
Speaker 3: human technology, even in the building of many important human settlements.
Speaker 3: So that's what we're going to focus on today. Mud,
Speaker 3: especially as a building material for humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the mud brick, especially because you know, we
Speaker 2: could build things out of mud, I guess without forming
Speaker 2: some sort of a a brick or or or you know,
Speaker 2: something to to stack, something to use, but it would
Speaker 2: be messy, it wouldn't be very effective. And that's where
Speaker 2: the mud brick comes into play here, and the ability
Speaker 2: to turn mud into this thing that then then can
Speaker 2: be mass produced and used to build a variety of things.
Speaker 2: Brian M. Fagan features several chapters that touch on mud
Speaker 2: bricks in the seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World.
Speaker 2: In a chapter on dwellings with Kate Spence, it's pointed
Speaker 2: out that we we absolutely can't consider human dwellings and
Speaker 2: the development and advancement of materials and techniques with also
Speaker 2: taking into account the shape of human culture at a
Speaker 2: given time and the environment in which they're constructed.
Speaker 3: The series of episodes has repeatedly just forced me to
Speaker 3: think about the interesting web of back and forth interactions
Speaker 3: between inorganic geological conditions in certain places on Earth and
Speaker 3: the life and culture that arises there.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right now. On that first count, that
Speaker 2: idea of you know what, you know, where are people going?
Speaker 2: Where are they living their lives? In ancient times? You know,
Speaker 2: as we've discussed before, there are modes of life and
Speaker 2: technology that makes sense if you're settled long term in
Speaker 2: a single area. But other modes make more sense if
Speaker 2: your nomadic or semi nomadic, as many of our global
Speaker 2: ancestors were. So for nomadic peoples, it might make more
Speaker 2: sense to depend for shelter on some manner of say
Speaker 2: wood frame plus high tense scenario, or to depend on
Speaker 2: very fixed, even naturally occurring shelters that you could take
Speaker 2: advantage of periodically, such as caves. There's also room in
Speaker 2: this for more permanent structures that seasonal settlements, places that
Speaker 2: you're going to come back to again and again, you know,
Speaker 2: when the seasons allow it, or the you know, crops,
Speaker 2: movement of animals, whatever happens to be the case, and
Speaker 2: then there are going to be you know, other modes
Speaker 2: of temporary constructions that are going to make sense as well.
Speaker 2: But the other main point is that of climate and environment.
Speaker 2: What is possible in a given area from a local
Speaker 2: material standpoint, would for example, makes an excellent material for
Speaker 2: building in ancient times as well as in our own
Speaker 2: modern world, But if it's harder to come by, if
Speaker 2: it has to be imported, et cetera, then it may
Speaker 2: make more sense to use it only for key roles,
Speaker 2: such as for instance, framing and lean more heavily on
Speaker 2: other materials that are easier to acquire.
Speaker 3: Makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, Spence does note in their chapter that the thing
Speaker 2: about many ancient building supplies is that they simply don't
Speaker 2: survive the passage of time. But we know our ancestors
Speaker 2: used wood and even bones as tent structures between twenty
Speaker 2: five and twelve thousand years ago in Eurasia at Jericho,
Speaker 2: which this book site says at least at the time,
Speaker 2: the earliest evidence of occupation there dated back to before
Speaker 2: nine thousand BCE, and it seems that the earliest houses
Speaker 2: there were built out of quote unquote clay lumps and
Speaker 2: probably also made use of wooden building frames before they
Speaker 2: transition to mud brick buildings. For first first circular in nature,
Speaker 2: and then later they used rectangular designs with multiple rooms.
Speaker 3: So tell me about mud bricks.
Speaker 2: Okay, So mud bricks are pretty fascinating. I didn't expect
Speaker 2: to get so into mud bricks, but this book and
Speaker 2: then another one I'm going to refer to in a
Speaker 2: bit really get into it and made me appreciate them.
Speaker 2: So mud bricks are especially useful in arid environments because
Speaker 2: mud bricks like other forms of solid masonry, are poor conductors.
Speaker 2: Heat Thick walls of mud brick will slow the rate
Speaker 2: at which the exterior solar heat is absorbed into the
Speaker 2: interior environment.
Speaker 3: So they're good insulators if you're living in say, a
Speaker 3: hot desert.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And additionally, structures like this, which are still common
Speaker 2: throughout North Africa, the author notes here, often feature high
Speaker 2: ceilings and small openings set high in the wall to
Speaker 2: encourage airflow. Also flat roofs since there tends to be
Speaker 2: less rainfall to contend with. So it's a design that
Speaker 2: has stood the test of time. It's a building material
Speaker 2: that has stood the test of time. Now, the thing is,
Speaker 2: of course, all buildings in general require upkeep, no matter
Speaker 2: what you're building in them. Out of modern buildings upkeep
Speaker 2: as well. But of course mud brick buildings require regular
Speaker 2: upkeep against erosion. That is specific to the nature of
Speaker 2: mud bricks, and we'll get into that more in just
Speaker 2: a bit as well. Now, in the seventy Great Inventions
Speaker 2: of the Ancient World, later noted in a chapter with
Speaker 2: Jeffrey P. Killen that mud bricks were also used in
Speaker 2: the construction of furniture, such as among the poorer classes.
Speaker 2: In ancient Egypt, wood and ivory were materials of the wealthy,
Speaker 2: while mud brick platforms served as beds by night and
Speaker 2: benches by day for common folk.
Speaker 3: As a side note on the subject of ancient Egyptian beds,
Speaker 3: if you've never seen ancient Egyptian the headrests, you should
Speaker 3: look that up. Where instead of pillows, they would have
Speaker 3: sort of a stand for your head to lie on,
Speaker 3: like a rigid stand. I find that really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, didn't we discuss this in the Invention of the
Speaker 2: Bad episode. Yeah, if memory serves, we talked about the
Speaker 2: work of a researcher who was like recreating these and
Speaker 2: testing them out.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, I don't remember what the conclusions of that were,
Speaker 3: but yeah, very interesting. So imagine instead of a soft pillow,
Speaker 3: you use like a little hard podium for your head
Speaker 3: to lie on.
Speaker 2: Now elsewhere in this book at it also points out
Speaker 2: that extensive town walls appeared in the sixth and fifth
Speaker 2: centuries BCE, often constructed of mud bricks, but with stone
Speaker 2: facing and or rubble filling. An example of this would
Speaker 2: be the long walls of classical Athens. These were destroyed
Speaker 2: by the Roman general Sula during the first century BCE,
Speaker 2: and they had been rebuilt even before that, So you know,
Speaker 2: it's the nature of fortifications. And then also you know,
Speaker 2: some of the part of it also is the nature
Speaker 2: of mud bricks, which we'll come back to. By the
Speaker 2: third century BCE, mud bricks were a common material in
Speaker 2: the construction of walled cities among various Mediterranean civilizations, according
Speaker 2: to Fagan. Now, one something that also comes up in
Speaker 2: these chapters is that mud bricks would have also been
Speaker 2: used in the construction of what was considered an antiquity,
Speaker 2: one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, the
Speaker 2: hanging Gardens of Babylon or the guard in terraces of
Speaker 2: Babylon that are often attributed to the ruler Nebekinezer, who
Speaker 2: lived six oh five through five sixty two BCE.
Speaker 3: Now, when I was a kid, I had a little
Speaker 3: booklet that I read a lot that was about the
Speaker 3: seven wonders of the ancient world, and one of them
Speaker 3: was the hanging gardens of Babylon. And I never understood
Speaker 3: what the deal with the word hanging was. I was
Speaker 3: imagining them like dangling from chains, but what were those
Speaker 3: dangling from? I didn't get the hanging part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it seems that a more accurate description would
Speaker 2: be terrast. We're essentially talking about great terraced gardens. So
Speaker 2: I wanted to get into this a little bit more
Speaker 2: because you know, obviously, if something's being held up as
Speaker 2: one of the wonders of the ages during this time
Speaker 2: and it was made out of mud bricks, mud bricks
Speaker 2: being something that you know, you might without knowing much
Speaker 2: about it, you might just think, well, this is a
Speaker 2: simplistic this is an old fashioned form of construction. Well, well,
Speaker 2: let's look a little deeper. So I picked up a book.
Speaker 2: This is a new book came out just this year
Speaker 2: that we've actually been in discussions with having the author
Speaker 2: on the show. Even it's such a neat looking volume.
Speaker 2: It's titled The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Science, Engineering,
Speaker 2: and Technology by Michael Dennis Higgins. It's a great book.
Speaker 2: It looks at not only what's historically known and or
Speaker 2: alleged regarding these wonders and how it ties into what
Speaker 2: we know about the geology of the regions where these
Speaker 2: wonders were located or thought to be located, but also
Speaker 2: what recreation in the modern world might look like so,
Speaker 2: Chapter three of the book deals with the Gardens of
Speaker 2: Mesopotamia because while the traditional view Higgins rides is that
Speaker 2: the gardens were set in the walled city of Babylon
Speaker 2: and what is now central Iraq just south of Baghdad
Speaker 2: during the sixth century BCE, there is also growing support
Speaker 2: for the idea that they weren't located here at all,
Speaker 2: but were in nineva during the seventh century BCE, in
Speaker 2: what is now northern Iraq near Mosul Oh.
Speaker 3: So that would make sense because then I would assume
Speaker 3: that would mean they wouldn't be the gardens of Babylon
Speaker 3: but of Assyria, right, because Ninevah was the capital of Assyria,
Speaker 3: but still would have been between the rivers, still would
Speaker 3: have been Mesopotamia.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One thing that that Higgins stresses, and we have
Speaker 2: to keep in mind with the Wonders of the Ancient World,
Speaker 2: the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, is that these
Speaker 2: were the these this was like a list that was
Speaker 2: that was put together in the Hellenistic world and the
Speaker 2: concerning things that were often far away, and this is
Speaker 2: especially the case. These were the this, these were the east.
Speaker 2: This was the eastern most wonder on the list by
Speaker 2: a considerable margin, and they it was so far away
Speaker 2: that you could basically say whatever you wanted and it
Speaker 2: would not be questioned.
Speaker 3: I've often thought of the writings about these as kind
Speaker 3: of the the Forbes travel Guide of the ancient Greeks,
Speaker 3: but maybe with some shaky sword.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because again, the idea of the Seven Wonders of
Speaker 2: the Ancient World are basically a first century BCE creation,
Speaker 2: and in this particular case, they're dealing with something from
Speaker 2: the sixth or seventh century BCE. Higgins writes, quote, we
Speaker 2: will never know definitively the where and when of the gardens,
Speaker 2: and it is likely that more than one Mesopotamian ruler
Speaker 2: had remarkable gardens that may have been conflated in stories
Speaker 2: and accounts relayed to the far off Mediterranean world. Higgins
Speaker 2: also adds this other great little addition. He says, quote,
Speaker 2: we should perhaps be wary of imposing a modern view
Speaker 2: of garden life. In one panel from the north palace
Speaker 2: of Ashurbanipal, king of the Neo Assyrian Empire from six
Speaker 2: sixty nine through six point thirty one BCE, the king
Speaker 2: is taking refreshments while listening to music with his wife
Speaker 2: Amid luxuriant trees, from one of which hangs the severed
Speaker 2: head of an enemy. So I don't know quite what
Speaker 2: to make of that, but fair enough.
Speaker 3: Well, you like to celebrate your accomplishments, and that can
Speaker 3: take many forms.
Speaker 2: Yes, anyway, onto the bricks. So the role their role
Speaker 2: in the construction of the gardens would would vary depending
Speaker 2: on where exactly this garden would have would have been.
Speaker 2: Higgins writes that there are five ancient descriptions of the gardens.
Speaker 2: The most detailed stems from Greek writer Deodora Sicolis during
Speaker 2: the first century BCE, but he does not identify the
Speaker 2: actual city where this is supposed to be, and he
Speaker 2: also doesn't name the ruler. All he says is that
Speaker 2: it is a quote Syrian king. Still, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of details mentioned in this account, and it specifically
Speaker 2: mentions bricks. He describes ascending tiered terraces full of abundant
Speaker 2: platte life, made level with the opposing battlements of the city,
Speaker 2: opposing as in like there inside the city looking at
Speaker 2: the their opposite an interior wall. So this particular account
Speaker 2: describes that the roofs over a series of galleries were
Speaker 2: layered with stone beams. Then they put down a layer
Speaker 2: of reeds and bitumen. Then two courses of baked bricks
Speaker 2: bonded by cement were put over this. And we'll have
Speaker 2: more on baked bricks in a minute. Then there's a
Speaker 2: layer of lead to prevent moisture from creeping down, and
Speaker 2: then enough dirt and soil on top of all that
Speaker 2: to accommodate the roots of quote the largest trees. So
Speaker 2: a considerable garden project any way you look at it,
Speaker 2: like definitely more involved than anything any of us are
Speaker 2: doing in our backyards. Okay, so I mentioned baked bricks.
Speaker 2: I want to come back to mud bricks specifically. So
Speaker 2: Higgins stresses that these were mud bricks were the most
Speaker 2: important building material in Mesopotamian cities, and this was especially
Speaker 2: true of Babylon, which had no outcroppings of stone in
Speaker 2: the immediate area Nineva. On the other hand, up there,
Speaker 2: there was a local supply of limestone, so they were
Speaker 2: able to lean on that much more for their construction needs. However,
Speaker 2: mud bricks were still used there because they were traditional
Speaker 2: and or inexpensive.
Speaker 3: All right, So you could quarry out stone bricks up
Speaker 3: in Nineve if you need them, But mud bricks are
Speaker 3: still just cheaper and more efficient in many ways, and
Speaker 3: you know, there were something people were used to using
Speaker 3: and they get the job done.
Speaker 2: Right right now. The process of making the mud bricks
Speaker 2: is also very important here, and I thought very interesting.
Speaker 2: I just never had looked into this before, but in
Speaker 2: this particular, their mud bricks you used throughout arid parts
Speaker 2: of the world where people have settled, but these specifically,
Speaker 2: these would have been sediments washed down the Tigris and
Speaker 2: Euphrates from what is now Turkey. Then the people would
Speaker 2: collect the mud and then they would mix in fresh straw.
Speaker 2: This would give the mud bricks, once they had time
Speaker 2: to dry, additional strength. And this reminded me of our
Speaker 2: episode on Pie Create Joe about creating building materials out
Speaker 2: of ice and how something had to be added, something
Speaker 2: had to be mixed in there with it to give
Speaker 2: them additional stability.
Speaker 3: What was it? Was it like, I want to say,
Speaker 3: like chopped up newspaper or straw or sawdust or something
Speaker 3: to that effect. Yeah, yeah, so fresh straw would be
Speaker 3: serving the purpose here, and it does seem like it
Speaker 3: did need to be fresh, and we'll come back to
Speaker 3: that in a second. Then, so you have the mud
Speaker 3: you've added in the fresh straw. Then you mold these
Speaker 3: into more or less uniform brick shapes, and then you
Speaker 3: leave them to air dry. And then once dry, you
Speaker 3: know today you have bricks for building all sorts of structures.
Speaker 3: So this began as mud, but it ends up being
Speaker 3: sturdy enough to build.
Speaker 2: With, right, So there are some pros and cons here.
Speaker 2: So the pros the big pro of course, is that
Speaker 2: these are inexpensive and they don't require high temperature, fuel
Speaker 2: consuming ovens to bake them as you have with with
Speaker 2: baked bricks. You can make a ton of them. You
Speaker 2: can use them to build battlements, buildings, et cetera in
Speaker 2: pretty short order.
Speaker 3: So again they're they're cheap, they're fast building material to
Speaker 3: make them as abundant, and they get the job done right.
Speaker 2: And I don't want to imply that, you know, there's
Speaker 2: just a crude mode of construction, Like obviously there's an
Speaker 2: art and a craftsmanship to making them, and I think
Speaker 2: that's key here too, Like the local people knew how
Speaker 2: to make them. There was a tradition of making them,
Speaker 2: and that also allowed them to bust them out in
Speaker 2: massive quantities in a short amount of time.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I want to be clear by saying like
Speaker 3: that they're inexpensive, I mean that they're you know, they're
Speaker 3: inexpensive relative to like quarrying or having to fire the
Speaker 3: bricks in an oven. But that doesn't mean that they're
Speaker 3: like junk. I mean this is this is building material
Speaker 3: that serves its purpose and it is efficient, it's smart.
Speaker 2: Now there are cons here. Of course, these are arid environments,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't mean that it doesn't rain, doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that there aren't floods, periodic flooding and so forth. So yeah,
Speaker 2: they're easily washed away or damage during storms. Plus this
Speaker 2: was impressive, as Higgins points out, the bricks at the
Speaker 2: base of walls of structures draw up and absorb water
Speaker 2: by capillary action. The water evaporates, but quote, salts are
Speaker 2: concentrated and finally crystallize between the mineral grains, causing the
Speaker 2: mud to flake, weakening the base of the walls. And
Speaker 2: he also has this was especially true would have been
Speaker 2: true in Babylon due to the rather brackish ground water.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay, so higher salt content in that water, more
Speaker 3: more crystals getting into the bricks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so mud brick buildings while essential for the time period,
Speaker 2: also required a lot of upkeep, and they would eventually fail.
Speaker 2: Mud brick buildings would eventually crumble and fall apart, and
Speaker 2: any resulting bricks would not be reused, nor would the mud.
Speaker 2: Like you couldn't just like you know, essentially wet it
Speaker 2: all down and form new mud bricks out of that mud,
Speaker 2: out of that soil. And it's thought that a lot
Speaker 2: of this had to do with the fact that at
Speaker 2: this point it's all it's old straw mixed in there,
Speaker 2: and it's not going to hold things together as well
Speaker 2: as fresh straw. So you would get fresh mud from
Speaker 2: the river, you would add fresh straw to that, and
Speaker 2: you would just build new new bricks the old side,
Speaker 2: the crumbled bricks, et cetera. You would just flatten that
Speaker 2: down as much as possible, and that would service the
Speaker 2: foundation for the new structure. And it's interesting that resulting
Speaker 2: mound of old mud bricks is what we call a tell.
Speaker 2: This is like a rising heap where these would these
Speaker 2: buildings would crumble, they'd have to be flattened. You'd build
Speaker 2: a new one that eventually would crumble and be flattened.
Speaker 2: Higgins rights that over the millennia. Such tells actually lifted
Speaker 2: the base levels of cities up above the plane, making
Speaker 2: them more defendable, making the more desirable as places to
Speaker 2: live and to work and to defend yourself. And therefore
Speaker 2: the pattern would just continue.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so you can see in the locations or
Speaker 3: ruins of some ancient settlements, especially in the ancient Near East,
Speaker 3: that maybe even no buildings remained, but there's just a
Speaker 3: big mound built up off the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that's incredible. So anyway, the problems of mud
Speaker 2: bricks were known, even though they were traditional, even though
Speaker 2: they were inexpensive. Higgins points out that not only is
Speaker 2: Babylon home to some of the earliest known recorded legal systems,
Speaker 2: but also some of those laws that were recorded concerned
Speaker 2: building collapses. It was written that if a building's collapse
Speaker 2: caused the death of the homeowner, then the builder would
Speaker 2: be put to death.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that is a strict building code.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, it makes sense you're building, I mean,
Speaker 2: not to say the eye for and eye nature of it,
Speaker 2: you know, makes it makes sense so much. But just
Speaker 2: the idea that like, buildings are important and there has
Speaker 2: to be some sort of you know, some sort of
Speaker 2: law in place to make sure things are built to code.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe not death penalty, but builders should be kept
Speaker 3: to a high standard.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And so you know, again, it was known
Speaker 2: that there could be problems with mud bricks, and it
Speaker 2: was discovered early on that you could transform mud bricks
Speaker 2: of a sort into something harder and less susceptible to erosion.
Speaker 2: Higgins writes, quote, heat changes water bearing clay minerals with
Speaker 2: their slippery playing card structure, into larger, interlocking crystals of
Speaker 2: minerals containing less water, which makes a stronger material than
Speaker 2: is water resistant. He ultimately compares this transformation to kind
Speaker 2: of a sped up and you know, less sophisticated process
Speaker 2: of metamorphism that in like in the ground and over
Speaker 2: geologic time, produces things like marble. And so he writes
Speaker 2: that many of the great Babylonian structures of the day
Speaker 2: would have been made of baked bricks, and these would
Speaker 2: ultimately last so long that they would be reused long
Speaker 2: after the final fall of Babylon to build such cities
Speaker 2: as Baghdad. And we see this in other parts of
Speaker 2: the world as well, Like the bricks stand the test
Speaker 2: of time, and then the bricks are scavenged in order
Speaker 2: to build the new cities of an emerging new world.
Speaker 3: But these would have been fire bricks.
Speaker 2: Bricks, Yes, these have been the fired Yeah, you're not
Speaker 2: doing this with mud bricks at all, But baked bricks
Speaker 2: are just that much more durable and and you know,
Speaker 2: and it's it's inter I was been talking about this
Speaker 2: with my wife and she pointed out that, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of the bricks we see on houses today,
Speaker 2: like they're pure they're purely ornamental. They're real baked bricks,
Speaker 2: but they're not like doing much or anything in the
Speaker 2: way of structural support for the house. Your house isn't
Speaker 2: built out of bricks. It's built out of wood framing
Speaker 2: and all the other stuff. But the bricks are there
Speaker 2: just for ornamental purposes, well, depending on the house. But yeah,
Speaker 2: in a lot of modern uses. Yeah. Now, Higgins points
Speaker 2: out that limestone was also used in special instances, but
Speaker 2: this would have been expensive to import in Babylon, Unlike
Speaker 2: with Nineveh. The walls of Babylon, however, were also sometimes
Speaker 2: listed as an ancient wonder in and of themselves. They
Speaker 2: were made of mud bricks, and the gates faced with
Speaker 2: baked bricks that were glazed with a glass like blue
Speaker 2: glaze that was then detailed with yellow flora and fauna
Speaker 2: things like lions and all. So these walls would have
Speaker 2: begun depended mostly on baked bricks for their their bulk
Speaker 2: and their protective qualities. But then you also had glazed
Speaker 2: baked bricks that made them, you know, beautiful to behold
Speaker 2: and spoke of the glory of the city and its ruler.
Speaker 2: So Higgins goes into a lot more detail in the
Speaker 2: book about all of this, and especially gets into the
Speaker 2: geology of the region. But I think just what we've
Speaker 2: we've drawn out here already, it provides a nice glance
Speaker 2: at the importance of mud bricks in the ancient world
Speaker 2: they're pros and cons, and also how they serve as
Speaker 2: a necessary predecessor to baked brick technology that would basically
Speaker 2: serve as the next step in humanity's ability to take
Speaker 2: essentially mud and remake it as solid earth for our
Speaker 2: own purposes. And how fitting too that this occurred in
Speaker 2: the shadows of the Ziggorots holy mountains constructed by human ingenuity.
Speaker 3: Now, from here I wanted to talk about one specific
Speaker 3: example of amazing mud based construction practices that still exists
Speaker 3: in the world today, and that is the example of
Speaker 3: the mud built skyscrapers of the city of Shibam. So
Speaker 3: I was reading about this number of sources. One of
Speaker 3: the main ones out site is an entry in the
Speaker 3: Encyclopedia of Architectural and Engineering Feats edited by Donald Longmead
Speaker 3: and Christine Garneault, published in two thousand and one. So
Speaker 3: the city of Shibam is located in modern day Yemen.
Speaker 3: It is situated on top of a rock spur at
Speaker 3: the southern tip of the Ruballkhali Desert of the Arabian
Speaker 3: Peninsula and the Rublkali. That name means empty quarter. This
Speaker 3: is an area of approximately one thousand by five hundred
Speaker 3: kilometers covered in sand dunes, with relatively little human habitation
Speaker 3: and plant and animal life compared to other areas. It
Speaker 3: is a hyper arid desert of windswept dunes of sand.
Speaker 3: So this is near the southern end of that area
Speaker 3: sort of where it's transitioning into other sort of ecoregions.
Speaker 3: Many of the buildings that still stand in the city
Speaker 3: of Shabam today date back to the sixteenth century, though
Speaker 3: the settlement itself is older. Several sources I was looking
Speaker 3: at said it went back to the third century CE.
Speaker 3: The population of the city in the modern era is
Speaker 3: roughly seven thousand, and most of these people live in
Speaker 3: these mud brick high rise houses. There are more than
Speaker 3: five hundred of these structures inside the city walls. I've
Speaker 3: seen vastly conflicting estimates on the height of the tallest ones.
Speaker 3: The Encyclopedia entry I just cited says that some of
Speaker 3: them are up to twelve stories tall. Other sources say
Speaker 3: the tallest are more like seven stories. I don't know
Speaker 3: what accounts for that difference, but I bet it depends
Speaker 3: on how you're counting the stories. Maybe its height versus
Speaker 3: the actual number of occupied floors, because I think within
Speaker 3: those buildings the floors are actually quite tall, like the
Speaker 3: ceilings are high, and there will be multiple levels of
Speaker 3: windows within a single floor of the building.
Speaker 2: That would make sense too, based on some of the
Speaker 2: the design parameters that are that are common with with
Speaker 2: with with this sort of climate and the sort of
Speaker 2: construction material like we referenced earlier.
Speaker 3: Right, because you want a lot of windows situated high
Speaker 3: up so that as hot air rises, it can flow
Speaker 3: out through those windows. So you get high ceilings, windows
Speaker 3: up near the ceiling above where the people are walking around.
Speaker 2: Now, I think people should if it's safe to do so,
Speaker 2: you know, not if you're driving the car, obviously, but
Speaker 2: you should look up images of this because when we
Speaker 2: say mud rick high rises, or you hear a description
Speaker 2: like the Manhattan of the desert, which I've seen, you
Speaker 2: might you might not fully believe it, but because it
Speaker 2: is very almost unreal to behold. But yes, it does
Speaker 2: look essentially like parts of Manhattan in terms of the
Speaker 2: scope of the buildings and the height of the buildings,
Speaker 2: and the modernity of the buildings, you know, and there's
Speaker 2: sort of basic shape and design. This does not look
Speaker 2: like a like like some sort of you know, archaic city.
Speaker 2: It looks at once modern and yet you can tell
Speaker 2: there's something about the building materials that is different. So
Speaker 2: this is a remarkable city that is rising up out
Speaker 2: of the desert here.
Speaker 3: Some sources have identified these as the world's oldest skyscrapers.
Speaker 3: I don't know how you make the cut for skyscraper,
Speaker 3: but they are very old buildings and very tall for
Speaker 3: their construction materials. So they are made of mud bricks,
Speaker 3: and yeah, you mentioned the sort of nickname used in
Speaker 3: some Western media, the Manhattan of the desert. As far
Speaker 3: as I know, the city of Shibam was first called
Speaker 3: that in the nineteen thirties. I think that it goes
Speaker 3: back to the British explorer Freya Stark who called it that.
Speaker 3: And speaking of how the city was described in Western
Speaker 3: media in the nineteen thirties, I found an article in
Speaker 3: an old issue of Popular Mechanics from nineteen thirty six
Speaker 3: called MUDs sky scrapers of desert built long before the
Speaker 3: log cabin. So it's just a little paragraph, but I
Speaker 3: wanted to read this because I thought it was funny.
Speaker 3: So it First the caption on the photo says centuries
Speaker 3: old city of Shibam in Southern Arabia is a cluster
Speaker 3: of sun hardened mud skyscrapers that have withstood tests of
Speaker 3: time and weather. And then the body text says, mud
Speaker 3: skyscrapers that were hundreds of years old when log cabins
Speaker 3: began to dot the American wilderness still stand in the
Speaker 3: ancient city of Shabam in Southern Arabia. The modern steel
Speaker 3: skyscraper is only fifty years old. Shabomb was a thriving
Speaker 3: city of tall buildings in the time of the Queen
Speaker 3: of Sheba, and still is a busy desert metropolis today,
Speaker 3: so constructed as to withstand the raids of hostile Arab tribesmen,
Speaker 3: with the windows high above the ground. The Shabam skyscrapers
Speaker 3: were of mud mixed with straw and maize, dried and
Speaker 3: hardened by the desert sun. And then directly under that
Speaker 3: there's another headline that says insects killed by vaporizer heated electrically.
Speaker 3: But so, as Rob said, if you're able to look
Speaker 3: up images of the city of Shabam, you should because
Speaker 3: it's amazing looking. But if you can't, one thing you
Speaker 3: should understand is that the city itself has a notably
Speaker 3: small and tidy horizontal footprint. It is about half a
Speaker 3: square kilometer stretching up instead of out. And when it
Speaker 3: was recognized by UNESCO's World Heritage List in the nineteen
Speaker 3: eighties I think it was nineteen eighty two, it was
Speaker 3: described as quote one of the oldest and best examples
Speaker 3: of urban planning based on the principle of vertical construction. Now, Rob,
Speaker 3: I'm about to divulge something of great relevance to you. Personally,
Speaker 3: I know you love a skybridge. Well, A lot of
Speaker 3: the mud built high rises in Shabam are linked by
Speaker 3: upper floor floating corridors. Skybridges may out of mud. So
Speaker 3: I attached some photos here for you to look at.
Speaker 3: It looks, at least at least some of the photos
Speaker 3: I could find, it looks like the skybridges are not
Speaker 3: covered on top. I don't know if they're all like
Speaker 3: that or if it's just some of them, but in
Speaker 3: some of these photos it's like a walkway connecting the
Speaker 3: upper floors of these buildings that has a bottom, of course,
Speaker 3: and then it has walls rising up on the sides,
Speaker 3: but not a roof.
Speaker 2: Wow, this is amazing. Yes, I had no idea, but
Speaker 2: here they are. Yeah, the mud brick skybridges, I'll take it.
Speaker 3: So from what I've read, the design of the city
Speaker 3: with its mud walls all around it also, as I said,
Speaker 3: it has walls surrounding the city that are also made
Speaker 3: of mud brick. The design of the city, with the walls,
Speaker 3: the high rises and the skybridges, is in large part
Speaker 3: defensive in nature. The city was built to defend itself
Speaker 3: against marauders. Now why, like, what would make this city
Speaker 3: in particular a target for such attacks. According to some sources,
Speaker 3: it may have a lot to do with Frankensnse and
Speaker 3: the Frankensense trade. Frankinson's traders used to have routes that
Speaker 3: cross the Rubl Khali desert, and Shibam was a hub
Speaker 3: along one of those caravan routes. So there was a
Speaker 3: lot of Frankensense trade and as a result, a decent
Speaker 3: amount of wealth associated with that. Now, Rob as you mentioned,
Speaker 3: mud based buildings are great and that they have many
Speaker 3: wonderful properties, but they do need frequent upkeep. The walls
Speaker 3: have to be replastered on an ongoing basis to counteract
Speaker 3: erosion damage from wind and rain, and they also have
Speaker 3: to be built with the limitations of their construction materials
Speaker 3: in mind. So the mud high rises here they tend
Speaker 3: to have thicker walls near the bottom that become thinner
Speaker 3: as the stories go up. So the buildings kind of
Speaker 3: taper inward as they go up higher, and this is
Speaker 3: to reduce the weight load from higher floors pressing down
Speaker 3: on the bricks below, because again the walls are partially
Speaker 3: load bearing, though there are also some internal posts like
Speaker 3: timber posts that help bear the weight of the building
Speaker 3: as well. I was kind of surprised to learn that
Speaker 3: many of the houses here are actually occupied only by
Speaker 3: a single family. So often the family will live on
Speaker 3: the upper floors of the building, and then the lower
Speaker 3: floors are places that are traditionally used for storage of food,
Speaker 3: like grain storage and for livestock.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating, and I guess it would make sense too
Speaker 2: that you'd want to live on those upper floors because
Speaker 2: you would get more ventilation and so forth.
Speaker 3: Now, Shbam lies in a valley at the confluence of
Speaker 3: several waddies. A waddy is a ravine or a river
Speaker 3: channel in the desert that is dry most of the time,
Speaker 3: but then floods with water during the rainy season, and
Speaker 3: as often have in desert environments, it can be very
Speaker 3: dry and then suddenly extremely wet when the rain comes.
Speaker 3: You know, so the flood comes in, and that can
Speaker 3: be very dangerous to human settlements, especially settlements made out
Speaker 3: of mud brick. Because of the placement at the convergence
Speaker 3: of these waddies, Shabam is vulnerable to flooding and has
Speaker 3: suffered catastrophic flooding damage at various points in history. Such
Speaker 3: as in fifteen thirty two, that's when a lot of
Speaker 3: the city had to be rebuilt. And why that's you know,
Speaker 3: as far back as most of the skyscrapers there today date. Now,
Speaker 3: why would you build high rises out of mud here
Speaker 3: instead of just more you know, regular low lying dwellings. Well.
Speaker 3: The entry in the Encyclopedia of Architectural and Engineering Feats
Speaker 3: identifies several reasons for the vertical expansion. One is because
Speaker 3: of the area's proneness to flooding. The city is situated up,
Speaker 3: as I said on kind of a rockspur so it's
Speaker 3: raised up above the floor of the valley, but not
Speaker 3: raised up enough to totally avoid flood damage, and floods
Speaker 3: can threaten it. So one is protection from flooding. Another
Speaker 3: is preservation of horizontal acreage around the city for agriculture,
Speaker 3: because there are date palm groves all around, and so
Speaker 3: expanding the footprint of the city would essentially cut into
Speaker 3: the farmland around it.
Speaker 2: This detail makes for some really beautiful photos though, because
Speaker 2: you see those brilliant green date palms all around the
Speaker 2: outside walls of the city.
Speaker 3: Yes. Another reason is the desire to gather families in
Speaker 3: a single building I guess this means like even large families.
Speaker 3: And then finally to squeeze more of the city inside
Speaker 3: the protective perimeter wall, which again was to defend against
Speaker 3: raiders who might want to attack the city for its
Speaker 3: wealth associated with the Frankinson's trade. Now we've already covered
Speaker 3: how mud bricks are made, but how are these skyscrapers
Speaker 3: in particular are put together. Well, they are made out
Speaker 3: of mud bricks as far as I can tell, you know,
Speaker 3: based on the normal method. So these would be mud
Speaker 3: reinforced with straw baked in the sun, which is stuccoed
Speaker 3: over on the outside of the buildings with a plaster
Speaker 3: made out of clay and chopped straw. And then this
Speaker 3: is all placed upon a stone foundation. As I said,
Speaker 3: the mud brick walls tend to taper inward and become
Speaker 3: thinner as they go up, because again the walls are
Speaker 3: partially load bearing. The buildings reach heights of forty meters
Speaker 3: or one hundred and thirty feet, and the walls of
Speaker 3: the ground floor are generally between one point three and
Speaker 3: two meters thick, so that's like four to six feet thick.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of it just seems to be a
Speaker 3: lot of energy efficiency in mind in the construction of
Speaker 3: the city because they have all these properties. But also
Speaker 3: like they have the sky bridges I mentioned, and that
Speaker 3: is to allow neighbors to visit one another without having
Speaker 3: to go up and down the stairs, you know, go
Speaker 3: up and down, wasting energy going that way. But then
Speaker 3: also the upper floors have this external white stucco to
Speaker 3: help reflect solar radiation and help keep them cool.
Speaker 2: I love I love this detail about the skybridge because this,
Speaker 2: like this lines up with the basic rationale for skybridges
Speaker 2: in the age of skyscrapers, and this sort of you know,
Speaker 2: forward thinking futuristic idea that like, well, life is going
Speaker 2: to be up there now and we need to move
Speaker 2: around up there building to building, And this is an
Speaker 2: example of it not really being a thoroughly futuristic idea
Speaker 2: at all, Like it's it's ultimately a much older, even
Speaker 2: ancient idea at least in places where you had tall
Speaker 2: buildings like this.
Speaker 3: Or maybe you could say it has been part of
Speaker 3: a smart, progressive technological framework for ages.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so, because I imagine imagine like
Speaker 2: coming to this city centuries ago, you know, and just
Speaker 2: how modern and advanced, it would be like this was
Speaker 2: like the blade Runner city of the day.
Speaker 3: Now a lot of the city's architecture centers around helping
Speaker 3: to deal with extreme heat. So one advantage of having
Speaker 3: tall buildings close together is that it really helps to
Speaker 3: provide shade within the city. Buildings also have a lot
Speaker 3: of windows to aid in ventilation, especially near the top,
Speaker 3: letting hot air out. But they also like the doors
Speaker 3: in these buildings, many of them are carved wooden doors
Speaker 3: that will have like these beautiful geometric patterns carved into them,
Speaker 3: but they will have openings in the wood of the
Speaker 3: doors again to allow ventilation, you know, natural airflow through.
Speaker 3: And also in the city. I was watching one video
Speaker 3: documentary about it that showed the city still having some
Speaker 3: very old school wooden locks, so like locks on doors
Speaker 3: that you would open by having a wooden paddle that
Speaker 3: has a particular arrangement of pegs poking up off of it,
Speaker 3: So you can reach the wooden paddle into the lock
Speaker 3: hole and you press it up and if it has
Speaker 3: the right arrangement of pegs, it lifts the what do
Speaker 3: they call the lifts the little tumblers, I guess, and
Speaker 3: then the lock opens Some buildings in the city also
Speaker 3: have wooden mashrabias, which are if you don't know what
Speaker 3: that is, it's sort of like a wooden, enclosed but
Speaker 3: ventilated deck area sort of, I don't know the correct
Speaker 3: way to describe it. Look it up, look up pictures
Speaker 3: of them. There are these beautiful external features that you
Speaker 3: see on a lot of buildings throughout the Islamic world.
Speaker 2: You know, coming back to what you said earlier about
Speaker 2: the setbacks in the design, the idea that you know,
Speaker 2: they taper inward and there's kind of a terracing as
Speaker 2: they go up. And of course this applies to more
Speaker 2: than just mud brick buildings, but you know, thicker at
Speaker 2: the bottom less mass towards the top. You know. This
Speaker 2: makes me think of setbacks in like a modern city
Speaker 2: environment like New York City, where even when you get
Speaker 2: to the point where you don't need the setbacks from
Speaker 2: a structural standpoint, setbacks end up being desired. You know,
Speaker 2: well for I guess a couple of reasons. One just esthetically,
Speaker 2: but also uh, you put these setback laws in place
Speaker 2: because you don't want to create the just like depths
Speaker 2: of shadow where the sun never shines, you know, you
Speaker 2: want there to be sort of more open sky in
Speaker 2: these these ravines between the skyscrapers. And yet also, you
Speaker 2: know you touched on with with this city that you know,
Speaker 2: to a certain extent, those wells of shadow are also
Speaker 2: desired because you want to create to create some additional
Speaker 2: escape from the overbearing power of the sun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So I guess again there are trade
Speaker 3: offs there. As you know, building building materials and architecture
Speaker 3: really is a story of trade offs, isn't it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's a banal observation, I just
Speaker 3: it just occurred to me.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the banal becomes the spectacular when you
Speaker 2: start looking at examples like this that turn our understanding
Speaker 2: of skyscrapers and modern urban environments on their head by
Speaker 2: placing them in in a much older setting and a
Speaker 2: different environment than we're used to contending with. So it's yeah,
Speaker 2: such a fascinating model to look at.
Speaker 3: Now. One last thing is I was reading about some
Speaker 3: threats to this beautiful architectural heritage recently due to weather
Speaker 3: and especially due to conflict in Yemen, leading to difficulty
Speaker 3: and performing the upkeep necessary to keep these buildings standing
Speaker 3: and all that there was apparently a tropical cyclone in
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight that caused a lot of flooding
Speaker 3: and damage to buildings in Shabam. And also I think
Speaker 3: there are some other settlements in the same region that
Speaker 3: have some similar construction and architecture in them that are
Speaker 3: also under threat due to flooding and weather and just
Speaker 3: lack of ability to perform the necessary upkeep. So I
Speaker 3: know there are some restoration and maintenance projects that are underway.
Speaker 3: I think UNESCO might be involved in something going on there,
Speaker 3: But it would be a shame to see this beautiful
Speaker 3: and ingenious architectural tradition, which is in a way it's
Speaker 3: a tradition that's ongoing because of the upkeep you always
Speaker 3: have to do to keep these buildings alive to see
Speaker 3: that go away.
Speaker 2: So yeah, now we also want to stress though that
Speaker 2: of course, this is just one of the phenomenal examples
Speaker 2: of mud brick based architecture you can find throughout the world.
Speaker 2: Like I said earlier, structures made out of mud brick
Speaker 2: are still common throughout North Africa and beyond North Africa,
Speaker 2: but this one really kind of stood out to us
Speaker 2: as something worth highlighting and just showing like what is
Speaker 2: and was possible with mud brick. So, anyway you have
Speaker 2: a particular favorite, or if you've visited a city or
Speaker 2: an archaeological site that features impressive mud brick construction, right in,
Speaker 2: let us know. We'd love to hear from you and
Speaker 2: we can talk about it in a future listener mail episode. Now,
Speaker 2: as for mud as a whole, our multi part look
Speaker 2: at Mud, I think we're going to go at least
Speaker 2: one more episode here. We're going to come back a
Speaker 2: little bit too, mud and warfare. We're going to talk
Speaker 2: about mud volcanoes and who knows what else. There may
Speaker 2: be another mud angle that we don't even know about
Speaker 2: yet because it is yet to emerge through our research,
Speaker 2: so make sure you tune in for that on Tuesday.
Speaker 2: I mangine a reminder that our core episodes of Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blil Your Mind published on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and
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Speaker 2: Let's see listener mails on Mondays, we have short form
Speaker 2: artifactor Monster Fact on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a strange
Speaker 2: movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other tues, just a
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
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