YOU CAN'T LIVE HERE: places where people built homes anyway
There are places where geography itself seems to tell people: you cannot live here. Sheer cliffs, a scorching desert, the crater of an active volcano, a cold high-altitude lake, and humid jungle — yet people did more than settle in these places. They turned them into real homes. In this video, we explore seven extraordinary settlements around the world where architecture adapted to conditions that, at first glance, seem completely unsuitable for human life.
We’ll see Spain’s Castellfollit de la Roca, where houses stand on the edge of a basalt cliff; Monemvasia in Greece, hidden behind a massive rock; and Kandovan in Iran, where homes are carved directly into volcanic stone. Then we’ll go underground in Australia’s Coober Pedy, look inside the volcanic caldera of Aogashima in Japan, visit the floating reed islands of the Uros people on Lake Titicaca, and finally climb to the traditional tree houses of the Korowai people in Papua. Seven completely different answers to one question: how do people turn a dangerous, uncomfortable, almost impossible landscape into a place they call home?
Sources:
Spain Official Tourism Website: Castellfollit de la Roca, its medieval settlement and basalt cliff
https://www.spain.info/en/destination...
Greek National Tourism Organisation: Monemvasia, the medieval fortified town built on an isolated rock
https://www.visitgreece.gr/en/mainlan...
UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Kandovan and Iran’s tradition of troglodyte rock-cut dwellings
https://whc.unesco.org/document/122862
South Australian Tourism Commission: Coober Pedy, underground homes and life beneath the desert
https://southaustralia.com/destinatio...
GO TOKYO — Official Tokyo Travel Guide: Aogashima, its double caldera, volcanic landscape and life inside the crater
https://www.gotokyo.org/en/destinatio...
UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Lake Titicaca and the traditional totora-reed floating islands of the Uru people
https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativeli...
Universitas Indonesia: academic research on traditional Korowai tree-house settlements and their transition to ground-level villages
https://scholar.ui.ac.id/en/publicati...
University of Cambridge: anthropological research on the Korowai and how their tree houses are represented in modern media
https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/korowai