Скачать или смотреть Why Medieval Stone Houses Stayed Cool in Summer Without AC

August 1347, somewhere in the limestone hills of Provence. Outside, the Mediterranean sun beats down at 95°F, turning the dusty roads into shimmering ribbons of heat. Cicadas drone in the olive groves. Even the lizards have retreated to the shadows. But inside a two-story stone house in the village, a merchant's family sits comfortably in their main hall, eating bread and soft cheese without breaking a sweat. The children play on the flagstone floor. No one is fanning themselves. No one is complaining about the heat. The interior temperature hovers around 68°F—a full 27 degrees cooler than the inferno outside.
Walk into a modern suburban house on a similar summer day, and you'll find a very different scene. The AC unit rattles and hums, struggling to keep the indoor temperature below 78°F. The electricity meter spins. The power bill climbs. Turn off the AC for an hour, and the house becomes uninhabitable within minutes. The thin walls, the large windows, the flat roof—everything about modern construction seems designed to trap heat and cook the inhabitants alive. We've built homes that require constant mechanical intervention just to remain livable, while medieval builders created structures that regulated temperature through pure physics and intelligent design. The question isn't just how they did it. The question is why we forgot.