architecture

81:2.15Man first sim­ply ap­pro­pri­ated his shel­ter, lived un­der ledges or dwelt in caves. Next he adapted such nat­u­ral ma­te­ri­als as wood and stone to the cre­ation of fam­ily huts. Lastly he en­tered the cre­ative stage of home build­ing, learned to man­u­fac­ture brick and other build­ing ma­te­ri­als.

81:2.16The peo­ples of the Tur­kes­tan high­lands were the first of the more mod­ern races to build their homes of wood, houses not at all un­like the early log cab­ins of the Amer­i­can pi­o­neer set­tlers. Through­out the plains hu­man dwellings were made of brick; later on, of burned bricks.

81:2.17The older river races made their huts by set­ting tall poles in the ground in a cir­cle; the tops were then brought to­gether, mak­ing the skele­ton frame for the hut, which was in­ter­laced with trans­verse reeds, the whole cre­ation re­sem­bling a huge in­verted bas­ket. This struc­ture could then be daubed over with clay and, af­ter dry­ing in the sun, would make a very ser­vice­able weath­er­proof habi­ta­tion.

92:3.6Re­li­gion has hand­i­capped so­cial de­vel­op­ment in many ways, but with­out re­li­gion there would have been no en­dur­ing moral­ity nor ethics, no worth-while civ­i­liza­tion. Re­li­gion en­moth­ered much non­re­li­gious cul­ture: Sculp­ture orig­i­nated in idol mak­ing, ar­chi­tec­ture in tem­ple build­ing, po­etry in in­can­ta­tions, mu­sic in wor­ship chants, drama in the act­ing for spirit guid­ance, and danc­ing in the sea­sonal wor­ship fes­ti­vals.