Dwelling on Earth: Ep2 Transcript

Dwelling on Earth
Episode 2: "The First Human Home"

Imagine, you’re thirteen thousand years in the past, at the end of the last Ice

Age. Most of the water on earth is still frozen into huge sheets of ice. However,

the sprouts of civilization are starting to grow. You, a Natufian hunter-gatherer in

what’s become modern-day Jericho, spend your days foraging, making tools, and

using them to process meats and grains for your tribe to eat. Today, a storm is

rolling in from the sea. Thunder cracks across the sky, you only have a few

minutes until torrential rain. Where do you go to weather the storm? Well, around

this time, early humans began to go inside for the first time.

Before this period, the earliest humans created temporary dwellings out of

grasses and branches. Because they were nomadic, moving from place to place

with the seasons in search of food and more temperate weather, it was important

for shelter to be easily constructed. In Israel, archaeologists have found evidence

of these early dwellings. The site, called Ohana II, was submerged under the Sea

of Galilee until 1989. A drought lowered the water levels, revealing small

dwellings with open-air hearths, stone tools, over 90,000 stored seeds, and even

a human burial. The dwellings at Ohana II were simple, likely only taking a few

hours to construct. Though they were quite primitive, these architectural

experiments laid the foundation for the later, semi-permanent homes of the

Natufians.

Natufians began to establish communities of semi-subterranean structures in the

Fertile Crescent, the area of the Middle East often referred to as “The Cradle of

Civilization”. Because of the wide availability of resources in this region,

Natufians began the transition away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one that

relied on agriculture. They became more sedentary, creating villages made up of

round, one room homes constructed from stone and brushwood. The remains of

these structures were first unearthed in the 1930s by British archaeologist

Dorothy Garrod off of the banks of the River Jordan. Across the multiple Natufian

sites along the Fertile Crescent, an incredible amount of material culture,

including tools, art, and some of the first evidence of domesticated dogs were

excavated along with the foundations of their dwellings. With the creation of

villages came increasingly complex social relationships among the Natufians,

pointing to a significant turning point toward civilization.

But, an important question has yet to be answered. Why did the Natufians move

indoors? Why did they establish communities and family homes? What does

home mean? It’s something that most of us can conceptualize, a place where we

feel safe and protected from the outside world. It is critical to our understanding

of ourselves as human, separating from other animals through the spaces that

we inhabit.

While there has yet to be a definitive explanation for our attachment to home,

there are several theories that may shed light on our ancestor’s motivations. In

his 2015 book, Home: How Habitat Made Us Human, neuroanthropologist John

S. Allen attempts to answer these questions. He says that home has become a

place of homeostasis for us, where we can return to equilibrium.

Having a stable environment is not only key to children’s development, but their

physical and mental health when they become adults. Children who grew up with

inconsistent housing are at risk of the detrimental effects of toxic stress, leading

to worse cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes compared to their peers. In

addition, even when homelessness is experienced only in utero, children are

more likely to be hospitalized and suffer from worse health for the rest of their

lives. For those who are chronically homeless, providing stable housing

dramatically improves their quality of life. In multiple studies, it has been shown

that providing stable housing through government funded subsidies improves

health, reduces healthcare expenditures, and reduces rates of intimate partner

violence. The impacts of housing instability are numerous and destructive.

Without a home, it becomes impossible to return to the homeostasis that Allen

explains is so important for us. But, with a changing climate and the beginnings

of a period of national economic downturn, homes that were once secure have

been upheaved.

As the temperature of our planet continues to rise, millions are being displaced,

forced to move away from the places that they call home. Even still, for those

already experiencing homelessness, the effects of the changing climate are felt

first hand, as they face exceptional heat, cold, and pollution. The construction of

single-family homes is an environmentally devastating process, destroying

habitats and depleting natural resources. But, 1.4 million homes in the United

States are presently vacant according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Luckily, some

architects are looking to minimize the environmental impact of their buildings

through sustainable design.

Shigeru Ban is an incredibly innovative architect from Japan who is best known

for his emergency shelters built out of cardboard tubes. Though his structures

are meant to be temporary, they show that sustainable, creative design is

possible. The shelters have been used in natural disasters across the world, from

a 1995 7.5 magnitude earthquake that devastated Kobe, Japan, to a 2007

post-tsunami rehabilitation project in Kirinda, Sri Lanka. For his work, Ban

received the Pritzker Prize in 2014, often referred to as the Nobel prize of

architecture. His extraordinary structures demonstrate the significance of home,

even if it’s temporary. These houses made of paper help communities recover in

the wake of natural disaster, giving them a space to return to equilibrium and

rebuild.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve all spent more time indoors than

ever before, probably more than we ever expected, becoming intimately

acquainted with the scenery of our bedrooms. The effects of so much time in our

homes is still unknown, but it remains a place essential to our psychological

well-being and sense of self. There has yet to be a definitive answer to the

question of what home is. Likely, this is because our experiences of home are so

individual, it’s impossible to make a generalization about what such an abstract

concept means. Although it’s cliche, home is where the heart is. It’s where we do

our human upkeep, our sleeping, eating, bathing. But, it’s also where we store so

many of our memories and have had so many of our most formative experiences.

Although our prehistoric ancestors likely would have never dreamed that their

simple dwellings could evolve into the multi-story houses of today, their move

indoors connects them to us, a throughline from one front door to another.