understanding of how early man fashioned the
environment. There may be lessons here not just in
construction and site planning but in sustainability,
particularly the use of water and renewable energy.
How our ancestors designed their world has relevance
today. Many ancient sites were successfully occupied for
hundreds of years and have lessons to teach us today as
the modern world strives to achieve more sustainable
patterns of development. Examples like Skara Brae in
Orkney, thought to be one of the best preserved Neolithic
sites in Europe, show how early man used primitive
forms of engineering to modify the environment. Here the
residents of this small community of twenty or so stone
built, mainly subterranean dwellings (perhaps housing
seventy to eighty people) harvested food from the nearby
sea and used peat for heating. Living on fish, mammals
(such as seals and whales), oats and turnips they eked out
a life in dwellings made of huge slabs of thin stone cut
from the immediate vicinity. The limited timber available
as driftwood from Scandinavia was used for roofing rather
than furniture, which was constructed also of sandstone
cut into shape using primitive iron and granite tools. How
the village was planned, how it was designed and
constructed, and how the lives of people were conducted
in these simple, Spartan stone dwellings are subjects that
can be more effectively explored through the freehand
drawing than the lens of a camera. The analytical drawing,
supplemented by observational drawing, gets the student
beneath the surface of the subject, bringing into con-
sciousness lessons about construction and sustainability.162 Understanding architecture through drawing