What is your house like? Does it have walls? Carpets? Is the roof made of metal, or of banana leaves? Do you cook inside? Is there a bathroom?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cultures all over the world build shelters to protect themselves from the elements and hold their possessions. These shelters vary widely, however, based on how and where the people who build them live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The kinds of houses people build, and the things they store in them, can tell us a lot about how they live. People who are nomadic<\/strong> (move from place to place) tend to have few possessions because they have to carry everything with them. Think about it like this – can you fit everything in your room into a backpack to carry with you? Probably not! Nomadic people don’t need big houses, because they do not typically have lots of things to store. They may have structures that they can quickly take down and carry along with them, or they may simply build temporary shelters out of available materials where ever they stop. People who are sedentary<\/strong> (stay in one place) can build complex permanent structures. These structures can hold many possessions, and these possessions can be large, heavy, and fragile because they do not need to be transported from place to place.<\/p>\n\n\n