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

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

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Many were built from timber and often represent the earliest form of permanent structure in many cultures. Types include the Neolithic long house

Neolithic long house

The Neolithic long house was a long, narrow timber dwelling built by the first farmers in Europe beginning at least as early as the period 5000 to 6000 BC. This type of architecture represents the largest free-standing structure in the world in its era...

 of Europe, the Medieval Dartmoor longhouse

Dartmoor longhouse

The Dartmoor longhouse is a type of traditional home, found on the high ground of Dartmoor, in Devon, England and belong to a wider tradition of combining human residences with those of livestock under a single roof. The earliest are thought to have been built in the 13th century, and they...

, and the various types of longhouses built by different cultures among the indigenous peoples of the Americas

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

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There are two European longhouse types of designs that are now extinct.

• The Neolithic long house
  Neolithic long house
  The Neolithic long house was a long, narrow timber dwelling built by the first farmers in Europe beginning at least as early as the period 5000 to 6000 BC. This type of architecture represents the largest free-standing structure in the world in its era...
  
   type was introduced with the first farmers of central and western Europe around 5000 BCE—7000 years ago.
• 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
  Fachhallenhaus
  The Low German house or Fachhallenhaus is a type of German timber-framed farmhouse, which combines living quarters, byre and barn under one roof.. It is built as a large hall with bays on the sides for livestock and storage and with the living accommodation at one end...
  
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