In fact, a dugout in its traditional form is a primitive type of housing that was built back in the Neolithic period. It survived into the following millennia. Even in the twentieth century, some peoples lived in dugouts, and not in our usual ground buildings. And if everything is clear with distant times, then what made people lead a similar lifestyle some more than a hundred years ago is not at all clear.
1. Why dug dugouts
In ancient times, when people had only stone axes and digging sticks from building tools, they dug dugouts and thus provided themselves with housing. Gradually, humanity developed in different directions and in terms of housing construction too. The ancient population of our planet gradually mastered new opportunities. People learned how to build semi-dugouts - the structures combined the underground and ground parts. Much later, ground structures appeared that were much more comfortable, lighter than dugouts, and also less damp. They have improved the quality of life.
In their original form, dugouts were absolutely not comfortable and it was not very convenient to live in them. It's just that people didn't know how to build anything else. In our time, with an abundance of building materials, modern tools and technologies, of course, you can build a real underground palace, and then all this was a real fantasy.
2. Why did people continue to live in dugouts even at the beginning of the last century
Indeed, in the territory of Russia, some peoples still lived in such underground houses or in semi-dugouts at the beginning of the 20th century. This way of life was typical for the coastal Chukchi, Selkups, Koryaks. From century to century, they kept their traditions and customs, including in relation to housing. In fact, the residential buildings of the listed peoples were quite interesting and quite comfortable - something like semi-underground palaces.
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But civilization did not leave a chance, and to be absolutely precise, the Soviet policy of "cultivating" the so-called indigenous population made its contribution. From their habitual dwellings, people were moved to standard houses. Nomadic reindeer herders, of course, did not quite say goodbye to national dwellings. They still live in tents today. Settled northerners in villages and larger settlements live, like everyone else, in standard houses.
If we talk about Russians, then they forgot about dugouts long before the last century. Although they sometimes built them, but only as a last resort, as temporary housing, for example, during building a house, in wartime, when people were left homeless, as well as dug them up in the forests partisans.
It would be equally interesting to know how at low temperatures reindeer herders in the tundra bathe, go to the toilet and solve other everyday issues.
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/131021/60863/