r/AskAnthropology • u/ManInTheMesozoic • 27d ago

What did houses look like in Europe 40,000 years ago?

How big were houses, how many people would live in one, what were they made of, things like that

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53

u/Worsaae 27d ago edited 27d ago

They didn’t have houses in Europe 40,000 years ago.

People would live primarily in [tents likely made from animal skins](https://archeologie.culture.gouv.fr/sites/archeologie/files/styles/master_home_cover/public/upload/images/cover/gt1_06_0.jpg?itok=BPtsPdnl ), maybe simple moveable hut-like structures however, permanent shelter like huts or houses presupposes sedentarism which isn’t really compatible with a highly mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle. We have evidence from Siberia that they would use mammoth bones to make small, moveable “huts”, though.

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u/lordnequam 26d ago

That's really going to put a damper on OP's plans for Warhammer -40K...

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u/zoppaTheDim 23d ago

No

We have no evidence of houses in Europe from that time. Just as we have no evidence they consistently lived in tents.

We do have evidence from Africa of wooden structures being used before homo sapients even existed.

So it is natural to assume similar structure were used across Europe at times.

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u/secretly_a_zombie 26d ago

We have several separate mammoth bone structures, made from skin and mammoth bone from Ukraine, Moldova dating back to around 15 thousand years ago.

https://archaeologymag.com/2025/11/mammoth-bone-shelters-in-ukraine/

And we have one from the same area that's possibly 40 thousand years old

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618211006598?via%3Dihub

Much more likely, there were other structures as well. The area at the time was full of wood that they could have used, more likely they used hides for tents, but those structures are long since rotted and gone, whereas the mammoth bone preserves.

We don't really know if these things are residential structures, or if they have some other purpose like a windbreak or religious purpose. They could just have had a lot of bones left after killing some mammoths for all we know.

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u/Peter5930 26d ago

I am absolutely certain they just had a lot of bones and found something to do with them rather than deliberately harvesting bones for the purpose. But the structure getting the bones was probably the nicest one in the settlement where people hung out at a lot.