The driving force of this urban development is likely the significant population growth, as seen in a proliferation of villages and small towns in the IVth millennium BC. Subsequently, it may be that as the climate became drier, some of the villages were abandoned causing market towns to grow and evolve into cities. As some […]
Рубрика: Water Engineering in Ancient Civilizations. 5,000 Years of History
Hydraulics and The Birth of Civilization
Water and the infrastructure for its conveyance are ever-present needs of civilization, whether for irrigation or flood protection, for water supply or for wastewater drainage from the earliest cities. Added to these needs are those of waterborne commerce, canals, and ports. This story begins in the East with the great Neolithic revolution, humanity’s fundamental stride […]
4,000 YEARS OF HYDRAULIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE EAST
From the era of the early cultivators to the conquests of Alexander the Great From the beginning of history up to the conquests of Alexander the Great, continuous and rapid development of civilization occurred in the valleys of the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Nile Rivers, as well as on the shores of the Aegean […]
Introduction
Water is the key to all civilization. The diverse and often competing uses of water inevitably lead to tensions and conflicts in its management and allocation. Water technology has progressed from the primitive to the advanced, but this progress has not changed man’s continuous responsibility for careful and fair management of this precious resource. Initially, […]
Acknowledgements
This work of Pierre-Louis Viollet on the history of hydraulics in the ancient civilizations, more generally in the civilizations of the classical era and the Middle Ages, is important for several reasons. First of all, the author is the first scholar who has attempted, with success, a complete synthesis of techniques in hydraulics, from the […]
Water Engineering in Ancient Civilizations. 5,000 Years of History
Pierre-Louis Viollet published the first edition of his book as I was finishing my academic career at the University of Iowa. I decided then that a challenging first project in my new life would be to spend a few months translating his work into English. A few months curiously inflated to nearly three years as […]