People have always needed special places to protect them from the weather, places for cooking and eating places for privacy and safety from enemies and even places for work and entertainment. The most important places are shelters. The first shelters were caving our homes built with available natural materials like tree branches, animal skins or even snow. Today, homes are built in many styles and materials and are usually designed by architects. Caves and simple huts provide a single space for living, eating and working. As cultures became more sophisticated, spaces were separated into different rooms, each one having a specific purpose. Some specialised types of houses, like feudal castles or emperors. Palaces were also the government buildings and often had hundreds of rooms. They were lavishly decorated to display both the power and wealth of the owner and the power and wealth of the land he governed. Some of the surviving examples of historical architecture are not houses, but rather monumental buildings and ceremonial sites, the pyramids of Egypt.