In the semantic web architecture, Web ontology languages are built on top of RDF(S). However, serious difficulties have arisen when trying to layer expressive ontology languages, like OWL, on top of RDF-Schema. Although these problems can be avoided, OWL (and the whole semantic web architecture) becomes much more complex than it should be. In this paper, a possible simplification of the semantic web architecture is suggested, which has several important advantages with respect to the layering currently accepted by the W3C Ontology Working Group. Categories and Subject Descriptors I.2.4 [Knowledge Representation Formalisms and Methods]: Representation Languages; F.4.1 [Mathematical Logic]: Model Theory General Terms Languages, Knowledge Representation, Web Technologies Keywords Semantic Web, Resource Description Framework (RDF), Resource Description Framework Schema (RDF-Schema), Ontology Web Language(OWL), Description Logics