‘World’s first skyscraper’ may be a 2,800-year-old Ethiopian palace

An ancient palace in Ethiopia may well have been the world’s first ‘skyscraper’ (Picture: artefacts-berlin.de/Heritage/Cover Images) The world’s first skyscraper may have existed far earlier than previously thought. An ancient palace in Ethiopia, constructed some 2,800 years ago, could have been as tall as 16 storeys, according to a new study. The Grat Be’al Gibri at Yeha, from around 800 BC, would therefore have been taller than Chicago’s Home Insurance Building, which was built in 1885 and commonly considered the world’s first skyscraper. Researchers have used modern computer modelling to investigate the Grat Be’al Gibri. The building was a monumental palatial and administrative complex measuring about 60m by 60m. It is already considered the largest known palace-like structure from the early first millennium BC in South Arabia and East Africa. Only parts of its ground floor and massive foundation podium survive, but archaeological evidence has long suggested that it was built as a multi-storey structure. Sign up for all of the latest stories Start your day informed with Metro's News Updates newsletter or get Breaking News alerts the moment it happens. Only parts of the ground floor and foundation podium have survived (Picture: artefacts-berlin.de/Heritage/Cover Images) The palace was constructed from locally sourced phonolite rubble stone and clay mortar, reinforced with layers of wooden beams. Unlike comparable construction systems in South Arabia, where timber was commonly arranged both horizontally and vertically, the beams at Grat Be’al Gibri were installed exclusively horizontally. Researchers set out to establish whether this unusual technique could have supported the substantial building proposed in archaeological reconstructions. Using a virtual three-dimensional reconstruction, engineers created finite element models of two representative sections of the palace: an external wall corner and an internal wall containing a doorway. The simulations took account of uncertainty over the mechanical properties of the ancient stone, clay and timber. The Grat Be’al Gibri at Yeha could theoretically have risen to as many as 16 storeys (Picture: artefacts-berlin.de/Heritage/Cover Images) The results indicated that the walls had considerable structural reserves. Previous virtual reconstructions had envisaged five regular floors topped by three recessed storeys. The new analysis found that this eight-storey reconstruction was comfortably within the theoretical load-bearing capacity of the walls – and it may even have been 16 storeys tall. ‘Theoretically, more stories are possible than the eight previously assumed as the maximum possible number in the virtual reconstruction,’ the researchers, led by Martin Drieschner of Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg write. ‘In the worst-case scenario, the building could have been 16 stories tall.’ They added that this was a ‘conservative assumption’ as ‘wall thicknesses actually decrease toward the top, thereby having a positive effect on load-bearing capacity since the loads become lower than they would be with the same wall thickness.’ Though the findings do not mean that Grat Be’al Gibri actually had 16 floors, they suggest that the surviving wall system was capable of carrying substantially more weight than the reconstructed building would have imposed. Researchers have recreated the building using 3D modelling (Picture: artefacts-berlin.de/Heritage/Cover Images) The simulations also produced an unexpected finding about the timber embedded in the masonry. Variations in the mechanical properties of the wood had relatively little effect on the palace’s overall load-bearing capacity. The properties of the stone-and-clay masonry were much more significant, with tensile failure in the clay-mortared rubble emerging as the critical structural limitation. Archaeological evidence nevertheless suggests that timber selection was deliberate. African olive and Cordia africana have been identified among the beams. Both types of wood have properties that include resistance to pests such as termites. The palace’s substantial construction provides further evidence of its scale. Ground-floor walls were about 1.9m thick, while the walls of the foundation podium reached approximately 2.2m. The podium itself was around 6m high, while monumental stone pillars at the entrance rose to about 10m. Other archaeological features, including a staircase, also indicate that the building extended well above the surviving ground floor. Given the considerable load-bearing reserves identified in the simulations, they say an exceptional event would have been required to cause catastrophic failure. That conclusion is consistent with archaeological evidence showing that Grat Be’al Gibri was destroyed by a devastating fire in antiquity. The study suggests that the builders at Yeha had developed effective construction techniques through practical experience and the transmission of technical knowledge, enabling them to create monumental architecture centuries before modern structural engineering. 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