The Cave House

**Because the animal was the capital and the warmth was free — and both were necessity, not choice.** ✅ **First — value**: **the mule or donkey was the most valuable thing a family owned** — **it reached the distant field and carried the crop and the water**; ⚠ **and its theft meant total ruin**. **So leaving it outside at night was an unbearable risk**, **and there was no money for a separate stable**. ✅ **Second — warmth**: ⚠ **a large animal's body heat genuinely warms a room** in a cold winter with no fuel; **a practice known across rural Europe**, not Matera alone. ✅ **Third — manure**: **the dung was collected and used on the field** — **the only fertiliser available**. ⚠ **The cost in health was severe**: **flies, parasites and shared diseases**, **and foul air in a windowless room**; ⚠ **one of the causes of the high child mortality** that brought the clearance to a head. ✅ **What you should take away**: **this was neither ignorance nor a cultural preference** — **but the rationality of poverty**: **every arrangement in this room has an economic reason**, **and the alternative did not exist**.