From purpose-built structures to keep people safe and dry, to spectacular skyscrapers designed to test the very limits of architectural possibility, homes have come a long way over the course of human history.

Adapting to different climates, making use of available materials, and finding new and innovative ways to carve out living space, we have never failed to make ourselves ‘at home’, whatever the conditions may be.

Click or scroll to discover the remarkable evolution of homes around the world…

In hotter climates, cave dwellings were extremely common in ancient times, as these types of homes remained largely temperate regardless of external conditions. They were shielded from the sun and encased in cool clay.

The 7,000-year-old Sassi caves in Matera, Italy, pictured here, were called home by families from Palaeolithic times all the way up until the 1950s.

Today, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, these caves allow visitors to explore what conditions would have looked like in these remote, mountain-side dwellings.

From as early as 800 AD, mud huts were common in hot areas for similar reasons, as the thick mud walls provided excellent insulation. The Tunisian mud huts pictured here were built by the Berber people of North Africa.

Still, these earthen buildings have been constructed in hotter regions for millennia, from the deserts of Arizona in North America to Yemen’s ancient walled city of Sana’a.

With earth used to make everything from walls to ceilings to stoves, these homes were durable and easily repaired, with no shortage of building materials available.

Conceptually quite similar to mud homes, adobe houses are another of the world’s oldest domestic structures.

The home pictured here features the traditional beehive-style native to the Sanliurfa province of Eastern Turkey, constructed from adobe bricks, with small windows and thick walls for maximum insulation.

With multiple humped roofs topping individual rooms connected by a long central hallway, this style of home dates back 3,000 years.

A very different style of adobe home, this archival photograph from 1893 depicts adobe houses in New Mexico, perhaps the region most commonly associated with the architectural style.

These homes were constructed by a traditional method of mixing sand, clay and straw with water, then allowing the mixture to bake in the sun in brick form. While adobe homes can be traced to the American desert regions as far back as 800 AD, they are also still common today.

On the other side of the spectrum were homes designed to withstand extreme cold, which, in the case of igloos, embodied the “if you can’t beat them, join them” mentality.

Igloos were traditionally built by the Inuit people, more commonly known as Eskimos, who inhabit the Arctic and subarctic regions of North America and Greenland.

Igloos are traditionally made by assembling carved blocks of ice into a semi-spherical structure, with a single tunnel entrance.

Designed for traditionally swampy or flood-prone areas, stilt houses are another architectural design with roots as far back as the Neolithic period, but which can still be found all over the world today.

These homes are, as their name suggests, houses which have been built on top of a stilt structure to keep them well clear of the water line, even during storm surges.

This remarkable image from 1930 shows a row of stilt houses lining the canals of Bangkok, which, at the time, served as the city’s roads.

Throughout the medieval period, France and England had an abundant supply of oak trees, which became the most common building material for timber-framed homes due to their sturdiness.

Half-timbering refers to the fact that logs were halved when being used for the framing. The infill between logs would be made of a wattle and daub mixture, or occasionally bricks, such as those used for this charming chocolate box-style cottage in Worcestershire, England.

Meanwhile, in more rural areas where trees were scarce and farming was the major industry, home construction relied largely on stone, like the traditional Irish farmhouse pictured here in 1907.

The stone for most farmhouses was churned up when farmers prepared the fields for ploughing or planting, and would then be carted off and used elsewhere as a building material for fences or homes.

These homes were typically one storey and featured thatched roofs, as thatch was another easily available resource.

For those in power, something slightly sturdier was required to protect against invasion or uprising. This took the form of fortified castles, which evolved during the Middle Ages, and were originally built by Norman invaders in the UK to control conquered territories.

These castles were largely built of stone and were strategically erected on hills or other raised ground to maximise their potential for defence.

Pictured here is Eilean Donan Castle, a fortified castle built in the Highlands of Scotland in the 13th century.

Over in the Hungarian plains in the 19th century, the concept of thatching was taken even further. This illustration depicts a traditional Hungarian cottage in the Puszta region, where the thatching can be seen to reach from the peak of the steep roofline almost to the ground to create a distinctive, triangular shape.

With vast reedbeds covering the Hungarian plains, thatching material was far more easily accessible than timber.

Between 800 and 1050 AD, Viking longhouses could be found scattered across Denmark. As the vast majority of Vikings were farmers, these houses were usually remote, bounded by a fence, and surrounded by outbuildings and farmland.

Most were made of wood, with bowed walls creating an almost ship-like outline, while the internal walls were lined either with clay or with vertical wooden posts driven into the ground.

Roofs were slanted and either wooden or thatched, like the one pictured here in Newfoundland, Canada, which has been completely overgrown with wild grasses.

Another style of long house also found in Canada, this structure was the traditional home of the Huron Indigenous peoples of Midland, Ontario, though similar homes were commonly built by the Indigenous peoples of the North American Northeast.

Constructed using a rectangular frame of saplings with their tops tied together, the homes were enclosed using strips of bark as a form of shingling.

Inside, partitions were built along the sides of the building to subdivide it into different compartments.

Another type of dwelling, perhaps most commonly associated with American Indigenous peoples, is the teepee. It is a conical structure comprised of several poles joined at the top and fanned out in a circular shape, with a canvas or skin covering stretched across them.

Teepees were historically used by the Indigenous peoples of the North American Great Plains, particularly the Plains Indians from around the 17th century onwards.

Over on the western frontier, meanwhile, where timber was more plentiful, most intrepid settlers lived in log cabins like the one in Huron, Oregon, pictured here.

Log cabins were a popular model as they were quick and easy to build given the abundance of wood, and were generally comprised of only one or two rooms and only one storey tall.

However, while log cabins in North America started around the 17th century, their roots can be traced back to Northern and Eastern Europe during the Bronze Age (around 3,500 BC).

In the 18th and 19th centuries, urban expansion was on the rise across Europe, with more and more people migrating to cities for employment, entertainment, and opportunity.

Many lived in cramped, dirty tenement buildings or could only afford to rent single rooms, while those of more comfortable means rented entire flats or built their own beautiful townhouses.

In many cities, entire streets were comprised of blocks of apartments available to let, like the elegant Rue de Rivoli in Paris, pictured here in 1800.

After the Second World War, the UK was in the depths of a housing crisis, with so many homes having been destroyed in air raids.

The solution was the creation of ‘prefabricated’ or ‘prefab’ homes, which were designed to be cheap to produce and quick to assemble.

These homes were largely single-storey detached bungalows consisting of two bedrooms, a living room, a fully equipped kitchen, and a bathroom. A very early model of semi-cylindrical prefab homes is pictured here in 1945.

Both the US and the UK saw a substantial rise in the construction of new homes after the Second World War, most of which were now being built outside of cities in what came to be known as suburbia.

With more money for construction, homes began to take more varied architectural forms, bringing with them the concept of curb appeal. The resultant new neighbourhoods were praised for being clean, safe, and an attractive option for young families.

Urban expansion was also on the rise, literally, in the latter half of the 20th century in cities all over the world. Starting in the late 1880s, the first skyscrapers were already being built, rising higher and higher in an almost competitive reach for the clouds.

Many city dwellers began moving into apartments in these new builds, which boasted spectacular views of the surrounding cityscapes, like the Hong Kong skyline pictured here.

While fishermen, sailors, and merchants had been living on boats for millennia, it was not until the mid-20th century that the concept of the ‘modern houseboat’ came to the fore as a form of alternative living.

These floating homes were diverse, resembling anything from an old narrowboat to a proper modern house. They became popular in waterside communities as wide-ranging as Portland in Oregon, and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, for their quirky charm and their budget-friendly design.

Our journey ends with a style of home with real appeal to anyone looking to keep costs down: the tiny home. A pintsized property generally comprises no more than 400 square feet (37 sqm).

The ‘tiny home movement,’ as it has been culturally dubbed, began in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and since then has grown into an enormous industry populated by high-end architects, designers, and DIYers.

Tiny homes are viewed as an accessible option for those looking for affordable home ownership.

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