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Humans

When did people start building houses with corners?

Around the world, the earliest buildings are typically round while later ones are rectangular – but 12,000-year-old buildings with corners don’t fit the pattern

By Colin Barras

25 February 2025

Rectangular buildings became common from about 10,000 years ago, as seen in this reconstruction of the ancient city of Çatalhöyük in Turkey

selimaksan/iStockphoto/Getty Images

Buildings with corners have a much deeper history than we thought, adding an unexpected twist to a curious architectural mystery from the dawn of village life.

Archaeologists have long been aware of a global trend in early architecture. From south-west Asia to the Americas, the very earliest settlements typically contained buildings with a round or oval-shaped ground plan. Then, usually a few thousand years later, these apparently went out of fashion, becoming…

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