The earliest examples of domestic buildings are the lake-dwellings which have been discovered at the bottom of some of the Swiss lakes, as well as in other countries both in the Eastern and Western hemispheres. They consist of huts, rudely constructed of timber, erected on piles, sometimes in such numbers as to form a fair-sized village. Their purpose was apparently to afford security against sudden attacks of enemies, the danger of wild beasts and snakes and the malaria and fever of the swampy shores, while bringing the inhabitants nearer to their food supply and offering a crude but ready means of sanitation. The system still survives among the natives of many tropical countries and has its analogy in the boat-houses that throng the Canton River in China. More important, however, archæologically as well as in relation to the subsequent story of building, as it gradually developed into the art of architecture are: the single huge stone, known as a _Menhir_; the _Galgal_ or _Cairn_ of stones piled in a heap; the _Tumulus_ or _Barrow_, composed of a mound of earth and the _Cromlech_. The single stone seems to have been regarded as an object of veneration and a fetish to ward off evil spirits. It may have been the primitive origin of the Egyptian _obelisk_, the Greek _stele_ and the modern tombstone. From the galgal and barrow may have been developed the pyramids of Egypt and the _truncated_ pyramid which we shall find to be the foundation platforms of temples in various parts of the world while the cromlech is the prototype of temples. Two stones were set upright and a third was placed upon the top of them. This represents in rudimentary form the so-called “post and beam” principle of temple construction. Sometimes two or four uprights were surmounted by a large flat stone. It had the appearance of a gigantic table and is called a _Dolmen_. It is conjectured that this was a form of sepulchral-chamber, in which the corpse was laid, being thus protected from the earth that was heaped around the stones into a mound. If so, the _Dolmen_ is the origin of the sepulchral chamber that was embedded in the Egyptian pyramid. Meanwhile, an intermediary stage between the highly developed _pyramids_ and the primitive _dolmen_ is represented in the =Altun-Obu Sepulchre=, near =Kertsch= in the Crimea. Here the mound is faced with layers of shaped stones, with which also the chamber and the passage leading to it are lined. The ceilings of both are constructed of courses of stone, each of which projects a little beyond the one beneath it, until the diminishing space is capped by a single stone. In the angle of masonry thus formed is discoverable the rudimentary beginning of the arch.