Water security and peace: a synthesis of studies ... - unesdoc - Unesco

The Romans, who in essence capitalized on the knowledge accumulated and
generated by the Ptolemies (notably at the Alexandria school) and the Persians, were
instrumental in the spread of hydraulic engineering to various parts of their empire.
The Nabateans, who in AD 62 came under Roman occupation, had by then
constructed more than 1,000 small reservoirs using small gravity dams in what is now
the region of Jordan. The Romans transported the idea to Italy in the reign of Emperor
Nero (AD 54–68) on the River Arniene, about 50 km east of Rome. The Romans also
introduced gravity dams to Turkey, Syria, North Africa, and Spain.
Greece and Rome thus left a lasting legacy – the legacy of a cosmopolitan world
from Rome to India that permitted the flow of information, ideas, and mechanical
devices on an almost global scale. Asia also contributed to a highway of information
along the trade route that linked China, India, Central Asia, and Southwest Asia,
which in turn was connected to Japan, Europe, Southeast Asia, Arabia, and East
Africa. The road followed drainage channels from the mountains to the desert, where
it clung to the footslopes of the mountains where wells were dug to benefit from
underground water fed by rainfall on the mountains. The first information highway
was thus a waterway.
It is remarkable that the Roman period, which entailed an unprecedented phase
of economic boom, land reclamation, intensification of agrarian production, and trade
on a global scale, was also a period of worsening conditions for peasants and for those
who had the misfortune to become slaves.
2.2.7. The City–Water Arteries for Urban Life
The Roman Empire left another legacy, glorious or inglorious depending on how you
look at the metropolis. Greater Rome had as many as 500,000 inhabitants, more than
ten times that of earlier cities. Ptolemaic Alexandria in its heyday also approached
400,000. The water demands of both Alexandria and Rome were met by ingenious
solutions. In Alexandria, the city more or less floated on top of hundreds of cisterns
fed from a canal connected to a branch of the Nile. In Rome, aqueducts and tunnels
were constructed to deliver water to a city that needed water not only for drinking and
domestic use, but also for public baths.
One of the remarkable urban centers was Moheno-Daro of the Harappan Indus
civilization. The mature Harappan civilization covered a vast region of about a million
square kilometers. The city was remarkable for its water management system, which
followed the city grid system, a notable feature of many mature Harappan sites.
In La Venta and San Lorenzo, urban centers of the Olmec civilization, ceremonial
platforms emerged following thousands of years of farming, fishing, and fowling.
Ruled by an elite who practiced human sacrifice, by the second millennium BC, the
Olmec city of San Lorenzo had substantial reservoirs and drainage systems.
In Guatemala, Tikal was probably the greatest of all Mayan cities, with
monumental buildings dating to about 400 BC and a royal cult of warlords dating to
the third century AD. To feed the large population of the city, narrow canals were dug
between raised earth platforms used for cultivation. The canals were stocked with fish
and snails. The city was situated in a vast, flat expanse of rainforest in the Petén
region.
Another great city of the ancient world was Angkor, which commanded a huge
agrarian area from the Gulf of Siam to Vientiane and from Saigon to the Menam
valley. The agrarian wealth of the region was due to the monsoon-fed Mekong River,
which allowed three rice crops per year.
2.2.8. The Moslems: Waterworks and Water Courts
Under the Moslems, originally from a barren desert region, irrigation waterworks,
aqueducts, subterranean qanats, water mills, baths, and fountains spread to many
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