Now, consider this. In the year 1292, Cistercian monks near Oxford built the Great Coxwell Barn using little more than mud, animal dung, and oak trees. This medieval tithe barn has stood on that spot for 732 years. It's seen blizzards that would make your heating bill look like pocket change, floods that modern drainage systems couldn't handle, and blistering heat that would crack modern materials. It has witnessed empires rise and fall. It was built before the invention of the printing press, before the discovery of electricity, before the very idea of modern science was even a thing. And yet, it's wild to think that this simple structure, built with materials we'd consider primitive, could very well outlast almost every single home built in our modern era. How is that possible? How can something so ancient be so resilient, while our technologically advanced homes can be so fragile? The answer isn't a single "gotcha." It's a fundamentally different philosophy of building. It's a lost wisdom that our ancestors understood intuitively. The answer lies in four forgotten secrets that our modern building industry has, in its pursuit of speed and profit, almost completely ignored. And the first secret, believe it or not, involves a healthy dose of animal manure.