Castles of Prehistoric Times
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Japanese Castles were somewhat fancy on the outside but served their purposes. These purposes were protection and temporary living quarters for the knights and other military men of the castles. Although the exterior may have looked more artistic than anything else, almost everything had a purpose. For example, the railings that stuck out over the walls had holes in the floor so anyone trying to scale the walls would be pounded with dropped rocks or poured upon with hot oil from above. Another example is the detailed exterior was made of a layer of plaster, laid over the wooden structure, which lowered the risks of the Castle being simply torched down. There were two parts to these castles: the wall and the donjon. The wall was very short, ranging from ten to fifteen feet, and had small “windows” that could be used to shoot arrows and to observe what is going on, on the exterior of the wall. The Donjon was the main structure within the walls which housed the military peoples. The Donjon was better fortified than the exterior walls and had escape routes coming out of it so if the security was breached, those inside could escape to safety. The interior had no individual rooms and was primarily designed for military usage. This was the overall design of what you would find in a Japanese castle in the middle ages. There were three locations upon these fortresses were built: mountains, plateaus in mountains, and flat land areas. Those in the mountains were only used in time of war and were hard to get to. One great feature of these locations was that the castles were less affected by earthquakes. Those in the mountains on the plateaus could be surrounded by moats or walls but had limited sight of the surroundings. Finally those in the flat areas were very easy to communicate through but had no natural protection and were prone to floods, if any were to occur.
European castles are much like Japanese castles in their purpose yet their styling and designs were different. For example, the interior of the keep was very well planned out and elaborately decorated. Also the walls were made out of stone and were much less susceptible to fires. The same concept applied though to European castles: the keep was more fortified than the exterior wall. Hoardings and gatehouses were used in European castles as well as Japanese. Because there were so many flat areas, moats were very popular. This paragraph about European castles may be very short