HISTORY OF BRICK

HISTORY OF BRICK

 

Brick is one of the oldest manufactured building materials in the world. As early as 14,000 BC, dried clay and hand mould brick were found in Nile deposit at lower layer in Egypt.

Clay brick was important raw material for building during the time of ancient Mesopotamia’s. Modern the ancient city of Iraq use mud brick earlier for building around 4000 BC and early Jericho wall around 8,000 BC. Starting from 5,000 BC, the clay brick preservation by firing has been recorded and documented. The fired brick in early civilizations were developed further as archaeological traces, such as Euphrates, Tigris and Indus use both fired and unfired bricks.

The Romans are responsible for production of fired brick and they used it, England also used it. However, brick making craft declined the departure of Romans from Britain in 412 AD and was later revived only by Flemish brick makers. Different types of bricks started developing in most countries in the world and were part of the Cargo of the first fleet to Australia, along with brik mould and also a well skilled brick maker. Most cultures, due to their physical outstanding and engineering properties throughout the ages for building have continuously been using bricks.(Lynch, 1994; Christine, 2004).

The main raw material for brick is clay besides clayey soil, shale and soft slate which is gotten from open pit, vegetation, drainage disruption and wild life habitat. (Hendry and Khalaf, 2001).

HISTORY OF BRICK