gs in common use, the result was that in this
chance way they began to talk, and thus originated conversation with one
another.

2. Therefore it was the discovery of fire that originally gave rise to
the coming together of men, to the deliberative assembly, and to social
intercourse. And so, as they kept coming together in greater numbers
into one place, finding themselves naturally gifted beyond the other
animals in not being obliged to walk with faces to the ground, but
upright and gazing upon the splendour of the starry firmament, and also
in being able to do with ease whatever they chose with their hands and
fingers, they began in that first assembly to construct shelters. Some
made them of green boughs, others dug caves on mountain sides, and some,
in imitation of the nests of swallows and the way they built, made
places of refuge out of mud and twigs. Next, by observing the shelters
of others and adding new details to their own inceptions, they
constructed better and better kinds of huts as time went on.

3. And since they were of an imitative and teachable nature, they would
daily point out to each other the results of their building, boasting of
the novelties in it; and thus, with their natural gifts sharpened by
emulation, their standards improved daily. At first they set up forked
stakes connected by twigs and covered these walls with mud. Others made
walls of lumps of dried mud, covering them with reeds and leaves to keep
out the rain and the heat. Finding that such roofs could not stand the
rain during the storms of winter, they built them with peaks daubed with
mud, the roofs sloping and projecting so as to carry off the rain water.

4. That houses originated as I have written above, we can see for
ourselves from the buildings that are to this day constructed of like
materials by foreign tribes: for instance, in Gaul, Spain, Portugal, and
Aquitaine, roofed with oak shingles or thatched. Among the Colchians in
Pontus, where there are forests in plenty, they lay down entire trees
flat on the ground to the right and the left, leaving between them a
space to suit the length of the trees, and then place above these
another pair of trees, resting on the ends of the former and at right
angles with them. These four trees enclose the space for the dwelling.
Then upon these they place sticks of timber, one after the other on the
four sides, crossing each other at the angles, and so, proceeding with
their walls of t