Longhouse
A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building built by peoples in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe and North America.
Many were built from timber and often represent the earliest form of permanent structure in many cultures. Types include the Neolithic long house of Europe, the stone Medieval Dartmoor longhouse which also housed livestock, and the various types of longhouses built by different cultures among the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Europe
The Neolithic long house type was introduced with the first farmers of central and western Europe around 5000 BCE—7000 years ago. These were farming settlements built in groups of about six to twelve and were home to large extended families and kinship.
The Germanic cattle farmer longhouses emerged along the southwestern North Sea coast in the third or fourth century BC and might be the ancestors of several medieval house types such as the Scandinavian langhus, the English, Welsh and Scottish longhouse variants and the German and Dutch Fachhallenhaus. The longhouse is a traditional way of shelter.