November 2023…

*Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind, Brian Fagan. Reading with CJS.

Comment after finishing seven chapters:
There is interesting material here, and I am happy to be reading it. However, the writing is not grea: it is difficult to follow if you are really trying to get a deep sense of what is going on.

The same date is sometimes referred to as 4,000 BCE, 6,000 years ago, or a millennia after another event. I can do the math, but pausing to do so drops me out of the flow of the text.
The maps helpfully included in the chapters lack many of the places referred to in the text: Where are the Taurus mountains? Are they the same as the mountains near Cudi Dag (not shown on the map either). Clearly, neither writer nor editors ever tried referring to the associated map…
Places are also referred to with different names: The Lands of Enlil; Southern Mesopotamia; the lands to the south of modern-day Bagdad; the Fertile Crescent refer, I think, to the same area. But it is difficult to be sure.
Often it is unclear what the relationship between sequential examples are — are they supposed to reinforce one another, or complement one another, or are they being presented for some other reason? Sign-posting would be really helpful.

Preface

The three themes of this book are (1) gravity and its fundamental impact on the flow of water; (2) the relationship between ritual and water management; and (3) sustainability. One point the book will take up is the way in which the invention of the mechanical pump transformed the mining and movement of water.

The book takes an anthropological perspective, closely examining the relationships between water technologies and human usage and management practices, and looking at the role rituals play. It looks at both historical examples — even reaching into the deep past where the primary source of information is archeological work — and present day examples. And of course the book addresses the ongoing crisis in water sourcing and distribution, and the question of sustainability.

Part I: Canals, Furrows and Rice Paddies

C1: The Elixir of Life

The Tonga. The book begins in Zambia, looking at the impact of a large scale hydroelectric project on the lives of the Gwembe Tonga farmers who were forced to move from river-side fields to a much more arid situation. The Tonga originally practiced subsistance farming and relied on annual floods to nourish their crops, and drew water from the river.

The myth of hydraulic civilizations. Fagan notes that classic work by Wittfogel, who developed the notion of “hydraulic civilizations” in which despotic governance was exerted by those who had centralized control of water distribution systems, seems to be wrong. Early civilizations appear to generally have localized — villiage level — control of water distribution, with various mechanisms for resolving conflicts among villiages. (p. 6-7)

Australian aborigines. The Australian aborigines are offered as an example of the close and complex relationship between a people and their environment, and the various cultural mechanisms such as Dreamtime and Song Lines that reflect it. Of particular note is that kinship and connections to mythic ancestors are one way in which water rights are mediated.

Other points

Australian aborigines did not use their hands to scoop up water but rather laid down and drank directly.
All early civilizations aquired water from afar (except perhaps the Khmer), and had a wide variety of mechanisms to acquire and distribute it.
Water — springs, rivers, lakes, oceans — is a motif in many religions, having great symbolic power.
In Islamic domains, water devices are not just instrumental but also symbolic, using sound and and light aesthetically.
For a long time Europeans did not believe rain and snow contributed water. It was Leonardo da Vinci who first suggested it, and only after Edmond Hailey demonstrated did the belief become widespread.

C2: Farmers and Furrows

Discusses the earliest and simplest forms of water use: farmers irrigating their fields by diverting water into channels and thence into furrows. These were locally-managed systems, and were limited in the amount of people they could support.

Some points in the chapter

~10,000 BCE: The chapter begins with what appears to be an imagined vignette from the Euphrates river illustrating the transition from foraging to irrigation-supported agriculture.
Leading up to this period global warming caused the retreat of glaciers, and the ensuing release of meltwater from Greenland and the arctic ice cap caused the stalling of the gulf stream. This lead to a period of drier and more variable weather that created the conditions for the transition from foraging to farming..
It is argued that the transition from foraging to fixed-farming was relatively easy and rapid, took only a few generations. Forager’s would have been well aware that plants arise from the germination of seed, and in times of drought it would not have been a great leap to supplement foraged food with food from sown-seeds. Forager’s would also have been well aware of the connection between water and plant growth, and diverting water from a stream to furrows would, again, not have been a great leap.
When a group shifts from living as nomadic bands of foragers to being settled in villages, many things change. The ‘ownership’ of land, particularly well-watered land, becomes an issue; also, disputes which formerly could have been addressed by separation, may have become more intense because the parties at odd could not get away from one another.
9,500 – 4,000 BCE. Mixed farming — agriculture and stock keeping — was practiced in places like Jordan. Initially farming was around springs and the wadis (ephemeral river valleys) were used for stock; by 6,000 – 5,000 BCE agriculture had expanded into the wadis; by 4,000 BCE the climate had become drier and they had shifted to floodwater irrigation. For this they built check-dams, channels, and cisterns. These apparently required no elaborate organization or social mechanisms for their management.
Present-day Africa (Zambia). African agriculture has not been static, but has evolved over time.
Landesque capital: investments in irrigation and water management systems.

What is remarkable is that nearly all of this irrigation farming flourished over long periods of time without being controlled by powerful chiefs or hierarchies of nobles and officials. Instead, village farmers controlled their own destinies, largely because of land rights that were vested in lineages and clans in the intricate ties of kin that linked family to family, village to village. The same lineages and clans dug, owned, and maintained water channels and controlled water distribution, for land and water went hand in hand and were, effectively, the same thing.
Brian Fagan, Elixir, p. 31

Engaruka, earliest known furrow farmers in sub-saharan Africa. They raised crops and also stock; they had an extensive system of irrigation canals that routed water from up high across considerable distances — up to 3K — to the fields. Eventually the group faltered — due to increasing dryness, according to the book (though since it provides no evidence I wonder if it could have been population growth) — and the population moved elsewhere.

C3: “Whoever has a channel has a wife”

This chapter examines present-day groups in Northern Tanzania that practice the small-scale irrigation. It looks in particular at the way in which irrigation system construction, maintenance and use is governed by social mechanisms. It is a bit patchy and difficult to follow, imho.

Marakwet

The Sonjo.

In many groups traditional rituals for managing water have been lost due to the advent of Christianity. But the Sonjo preserve some of their old traditions:

There are weak penalties for violating rules — e.g. stealing water at night — which perhaps serves as a social counterbalance to the entrenched power of elders and elites.
There are social mechanisms for sharing water with outsiders in return for their labor (though nothing is said about the particulars).
Extensions of irrigation and water management technology is often accompanied by marriages to create/strengthen alliances.

The Pokot

The system is in a state of constant flux and individual negotiation, especially when there is plenty of water and communal needs are low.

Pokot irrigation works well because of this flexibility, and also be cause the maintenance required to keep the furrows in good working order is much smaller than one might think. […]
It would be a mistake to think of Pokot irrigation as a static, self-sustaining entity. It has endured for many generations, but its durability comes from its very flexibility, its ability to expand and contract in the face of social changes, different forms of government, tribal war-fare, and climatic shifts.
Brian Fagan, Elixir, p. 53

C4: Hohokam: “Something that is All Gone”

Hohokum, Central Arizona, 450 – 1500 CE. Over a millennium the Hohokum built irrigation systems that spanned 30,000 square miles; some canals were up to 20 miles long. As their irrigation systems became more complex, their society appears — at least from the architecture — to have become more hierarchical, with plazas turning into ball courts turning into giant ceremonial mounds, and the larger buildings that were presumably inhabited by the elite becoming more elaborate and more sequestered from public access. The last three centuries of the Hohokam civilization appears to have coincided with the medieval warm period, and the general belief is that the civilization collapsed and smaller groups left for outlying areas where more water was available and farming was smaller scale.

For most of the span of the civilization, it appears that irrigation was organized at the village level, and that there was no centralized authority or leadership. As the civilization entered its last three centuries, there was likely a period of extended drought that lead to an increasingly hierarchical social structure, and eventually the collapse of the civilization.
Architecture of the canal system. The canal system began at the river with a weir that raised the water level and diverted it into the canal. At the start of the canal was a head gate that controlled the amount of water entering, and from there the water flowed into distribution canals (up to eighty-five feet across and 20 feet deep); these canals diminished in size away from the river, a technique that ensured a steady flow (necessary to keep the canals from eroding (if too fast) or silting up (if too slow). Control gates on these canals could be closed, allowing a head of water to build up that was then released to regulate the flow. Feeder channels that carried water through wicker and stone gates branched off the distribution canals, and carried water to grid-like channels or furrows that irrigated the fields.
History-1 (Santa Cruz river). Around 1500 BCE there were small groups to the south along the Santa Cruz river (near Tuscon), and used simple methods for irrigation. This culture dissipated around 0 CE, possibly due to downcutting of the Santa Cruz and other southern Arizona rivers that made irrigation difficult.
History-2 (Valencia Vieja). After this, a successor civilization arose along the Santa Cruz that made irrigation a priority. This culture had a more complex irrigation system, and by 425 CE appears to have had elite leaders who lived in larger structures around plazas.
History-2 (Hohokam, Valley of Phoenix). Hohokam culture appeared around 450 CE, heralded by a variety of innovations: plazas, new pottery forms, new cooking vessels (allowing children to be weaned earlier), and new varieties of maize.
Stable vs. Shifting River channels had a big impact: Rivers that did not shift enabled permanent villages and the creation of extensive irrigation structures; rivers that shifted obviously made such investments a bad idea.

C5: The Power of the Waters [Bali]

Unlike the prior chapters, in Bali the problem is not to store and distribute scare water, but rather to get an abundant resource to the right places. Bali has a single irrigation system for the entire island (at least the part of it that is arable), and a sophisticated socio-technical system for central control.

The Balinese system, an intricate mosaic of rice paddies and irrigation works, has lasted over a thousand years.
Terms: Subak — a complex of rice fields receiving water from a single conduit, made up of one or more tempeks (a block of rice fields). A subak has both secular and religious import: members of a subak carry out maintenance on canals and temples. A tembuku is a wooden water divider that defines a tenah, the amount of water that will irrigate a unit of land within a fixed period of time. A Bedugl is a small shrine at the point where water enters a farmer’s fields.
Geography. Bali is dominated by mount Bakur, and active volcano in whose calder lies lake Breton, at 4,000 feet (far above the elevation at which rice can be cultivated). The arable areas, and most of the population, are in a natural amphitheater created by Bali’s volcanos; this amphitheater, however, is 25 miles from the ocean and is remarkably small.
Religion. Dewi Danu is the goddess of the lake; her congregation consists of the several hundred subaks. She is worshipped in the Pura Ulun temple at the crater lake: there is a high priest, Jero Gde, and 24 priests, selected during childhood by a virgin high priest. The water temple system is not connected to any of the many kingdoms on Bali.
Temples. Weir temples divert water from rivers or springs; each weir temple has as its congregation the farmers that use its water. (Presumably Pura Ulan, the temple at crater lake, is at the top of the hierarchy — I am not sure if there is water that comes directly from this, or if it is the source of the rivers and springs). About a half mile downstream from the weir temples the water reaches a complex of rice fields that have a shrine enclosed in a walled courtyard — this is where Ulun Swi, Head of the Rice Temple lies. At the bottom of the hierarchy is the bedugul, a small shrine maintained by each farmer.
The irrigation system includes tunnels, and must cope with both drought and monsoon floods (the latter can wash out a patty in a matter of hours). The irrigation systems also is used to release pulses of nutrient-rich water during the dry season (something which significantly increases productivity) and to manage water supply to control pests (I’m not sure how).

…reading break…

Part II: Waters from Afar

This part is about ancient large scale irrigation, where water had to be brought from a long way off.

C6: Landscapes of Enlil [Southern Iraq/Fertile Crescent]

This is about the floodplains between the Tigris and the Euphrates in Southern Iraq, aka the Fertile Crescent, aka Southern Mesopotamia. In spite of being the first chapter in the large scale irrigation section, this chapter is “confined to the surroundings of small villages.” It would be nice to know why we’re starting here.

Southern Iraq is characterized by meandering rivers with shifting courses (due to its low gradient), and flood zones and alluvial seeps that frequently shifted. Farmers appeared to use a combination of tapping alluvial seeps and flood irrigation to water their crops. Although the environment was arid, the rainfall was greater than today (until about 4,000 BCE), and summer monsoons would have inundated areas for months at a time.

Each community flourished amid a mosaic of local environments that included natural flood basins, marshes, and levee areas with fertile soils that were subject to irregular flooding. This palimpsest of different environments provided an important safety net, to the point that if crops failed, the villagers could become virtually full-time herders or could fall back on fish, waterfowl, and other marsh foods.
— Brian Fagan, Elixir, p 114

Two environmental factors posed particular challenges to farmers in this area:

Low Gradient. The low gradient of flow created two problems. One was that it was difficult to make channels that were very long, as the low gradient would lead to slow flow and thus silt deposition. The other problem was avulsion, where meandering river channels broke out of their banks and took other routes.
Salinity. Salinity was dealt with by letting fields go fallow: during this period nutrient rich wild plants would dry out the subsoil, and that would lead to salt being leached out. Salinity was also dealt with by planting salt-resistant forms of barley.

Around 3,800 BCE Mesopotamia became significantly drier, which led to momentous consequences.

C7: The Lands of Enki [Southern Iraq / Sumer]

We are in the same area as before – southern Iraq – in spite of the change in name in the chapter title.

Around 3,800 BCE the area became significantly dried ((this is attributed to shifts in the angle of the earth related to the sun????). As a result, the summer monsoon weakened and shifted to the south, and the rains started later and ended earlier, resulting in diminished summer floods that arrived after the harvest, meaning that near-ripe crops received less water. The drying climate also reduced flow in the Tigris and Euphrates, and led to instability and prolonged drought cycles.

This climatic change was one of the factors that apparently lead to cities – Eridu and Uruk – coalescing from hundreds of small villages:

What actually happened will never be known for sure, but most experts now agree that a combination of climatic change, rapidly expanding long-distance trade, and the growing power of temples and their leaders was among the tidal streams that triggered major social change. There is only one certainty in this complex equation. Without high-yield irrigation and ample water supplies, cities and civilization would never have developed in the land between the rivers.
Brian Fagan, Elixir, p. 118

By 3,100 BCE the city of Uruk covered nearly 550 acres, and the population was 50,000 – 80,000, More generally, 80% of the population lived in settlements covering at least 25 acres. This marks the appearance of Sumer, a jigsaw of intensely competitive city-states. During this period various innovations appeared:

Furrow Farming. Shift from basin irrigation to furrow irrigation. Basins were flat because they were flooded; furrow fields needed to be long and slightly sloped, ideally draining into marshes.
New Farming Technology. Furrow fields were difficult to tend by hand and were created by the “scratch plow,” pulled by oxen, and sown using the “seeder plow,” which used a funnel to distribute seeds into the furrow. It is estimated that furrow farming increased yields by 500% to 1,000%
Barley. Another factor was Barley, which was salt-resistant and also matured quickly, enabling it to be harvested before locusts arrived.
Temples. The systems was apparently administered by temples, which took the bulk of the harvest for themselves and distributed a small portion to the (corvée) workers who — at designated times — conducted canal maintenance, harvesting, and so on. “The strip fields and their densely packed furrows required a level of supervision that transcended the family and kin group.” Quickly this appears to have led to a distinction between commoners and the elite.

Around 2,700 BCE walls appeared around Sumerian cities, and wars occurred. The city-states went through cycles of boom and bust, and formed shifting political alliances that gained and lost territories, and that also controlled trade routes the extended to Turkey and the Mediterranean. This lasted through the 2nd millennium BCE.

Around 1,000 BCE irrigation technology advanced and became capable of manipulating water at a much greater scale by constructing large-scale canals. “The only way to construct large-scale irrigation works was to use imported labor such as the landless and destitute or, increasingly, enslaved prisoners of war, a practice that was commonplace in later times (see chapter 8).“

Note: At this point, it seems to me we are starting to get close to XXX’x notion of hydraulic civilizations. It would be interesting to hear what Fagan thinks about this.

…reading break…

C8: “I Caused a Canal to be Cut” [Egypt / Iran]

Egypt. Very shallow gradient of the Nile allowed only flood basin irrigation.
Old Kingdom, 1.25 million people from 2570-2180 BCE. The Old Kingdom’s decline around 2180 BCE coincides with a period of significant climate change, often referred to as the 4.2 kiloyear even
Middle Kingdom, xxxx, from 2055-1650 BCE. With the advent of the Middle Kingdom, there is evidence that the climate became more stable, allowing the Nile floods to return to their regular and predictable patterns. The end of the Middle Kingdom is attributed to invasion and colonization by the Hyskos (who had new tech — horse-drawn chariots), and destabilization due to weakening of the pharos due to dynastic struggles and increasingly autonomous local governors.
NewKingtom, 2 million people from 1550-1070 BCE
Assyria. Had large scale irrigation agriculture with canals and massive infrastructure, dependent on forced labor.
Quanat. Long tunnels dug into alluvial fans by sinking vertical shafts and digging between them. The vertical shafts provided ventilation, and made it possible for tunnel digging to not be a form of suicide. Quanats produce water in proportion to the ‘head’ on the groundwater they are tapping, so they do not deplete the water table. They were probably invented in the 8th Century BCE in Urartu (elsewhere it says they were around for several centuries), and were then adopted by Sargon II when he invaded in the 7th century BCE. Later Cyrus the great established the Achaemenid empire in the 5th Century BCE and at that point quanats spread throughout the mideast and northern africa.
Sassian Empire. Beginning in the 2nd Century CE, the Sassian Empire created massive irrigation projects with a canal 143 miles long in the 6th Century CE. They used irrigation agriculture enhanced by the use of quanats; they also used crude waterwheels to grind grain.

C9: The Waters of Zeus [Greece, Cyprus, Crete, et al.]

In Greece water management was village-scale self-sustaining water management; the main difference from other small scale irrigation in arid areas was that they had, at times, to contend with torential rains. So sometimes they had to manage excess water, but they also needed to store water for the dry parts of the year, which they did using cisterns and wells. They were fortunate to live in a karst landscape
During 2nd millennium BCE the Minoans of Crete pioneered the construction of aqueducts in rugged terrain. The Minoans also used terracotta pipes to distribute water, and these pipes were notable in that they had collars and stop ridges to assure a good fit between adjacent segments of pipe; the pipe segments also tapered slightly, causing an increase in velocity and decreasing build-up of sediment.
The successors of the Minoans preserved their hydrological expertise and constructed tunnels and aqueducts to distribute water. One example, by Eupalinos, was of a horizontal tunnel dug through a large hill (horizontal tunnels were easier to dig than sloped ones), and then a sloped channel was cut down the side of the tunnel gradually transitioning into a pipe to maintain the downward gradient.
The Acropolis in Athens was mainly important for its springs and seeps — it is girdled by a series of springs and water-bearing caves, in effect it is a huge reservoir. Local water was insufficient and so the Greeks built aqueducts (one 4.5 miles) and systems of pipes to bring water to Athens.
Laws. The Athenians are notable because they (Solon) made laws that governed the use and distribution of water — Solon’s aim was to support use but to deter laziness.

This is how some Greek cities lasted for nearly five centuries in harsh terrain with uncertain rainfall. Generations of water experts were well aware of the constraints, stored water as close as possible to its points of use, covered channels to reduce evaporation, and diverted the excess from perennially running fountains for other purposes. They differentiated between potable water and water used for purposes that did not involve ingesting it, such as washing and laundry. They also made careful use of wastewater for industrial activities such as fulling and potting.
Brian Fagan, Elixir, p. 166

Waterwheels, etc. The Ptomlemies sponsored the formation of a research community in Alexandria, devoted to the development of weapons, but also to water-related technologies. Around the 4th century BCE human-powered waterwheels were invented. In the 3rd Century BCE an oxen powered version — the saqiya – was invented. Sometime later an anonymous inventor produced norias, a version powered by the water itself with paddles on the outside, and vessels at the rim. In the 2nd century BCE Archimedes invented the Archimedes screw, that lifted water into irrigation channels — this was so successful at moving water with suspended solids that it is still used today. Around the same time Ctesbius invented the water clock and the force pump.
Somewhere around this time siphons were also developed, to carry water across valleys.

C10: Aqua Roma [Italy et al.]

Romans were not great innovators, but were great at appropriating new ideas and scaling them up. Their aquaducts spanned great distances, on the order of 50 miles. They were generally open, and had a constant flow of water — essentially they were artificial rivers.
Aquaducts. Aquaducts had settling tanks to eliminate silt from the water; sinter — calcium carbonate — was a problem. It accreted in the aqueducts and had to be chipped out. Aquaducts were generally ditches lined with masonry and, at the bottom, a layer of very fine mortar so to least retard the flow of water.
At the point of use. Aquaducts, upon reaching a city, flowed into the castellum, which served as a distribution point for open channels or pipes to take water to various neighborhoods. Some castellae were designed so that the exit pipes were at different levels, so that in times of lower-flow water was automatically prioritized for particular places/uses. There were also subcastella that served individual residences — these were often water towers.
Sometimes the water from cisterns was passed through amphora filled with charcoal and sand to filter the water before use.
It was common for public fountains to have water from two sources, to buffer against the failure of one.
The Chorobates. To construct aquaducts and keep them level (or slightly off level) the Roman’s used a level that consisted of a long piece of wood with a groove in it, into which water was poured.
Lead. The Romans knew that lead was poisonous. The use of lead pipes in their plumbing was not a problem, both because of the constant flow of water, and because the accumulation of sinter would seal off the lead from the water.
Water storage. Any thought of storage of water for off-season use was totally alien to the Romans.
Baths. The custom of public bathing took hold in Rome in 200 BCE, and became a ‘third place’ that supported conversation and socializing. Early on, small baths were operated throughout the empire and charged a small fee; in later times, huge public baths were constructed by politicians and others…

…reading break…

Part III: Cisterns and Monsoons

C11: Waters that Purify [India… Indus & ]

Harappan Civilization (Harrapa and Mohhenjodaro). ~2450 BCE. Handled lots of water, due to two rainy seasons influence by the Intertropical Convergence Zone — but rains sporadic, and so great reliance on brick-lined wells and cisterns. Amazing sewage and waste water control. A very egalitarian approach to water sharing, and evidence of advance-planned infrastructure with centralized administration. Religion and ritual probably a big factor.
Dohlavira (3000 BCE). A much drier climate that Harrapa, with monsoons prone to failing several years in a row. Massive interconnected reservoirs and water storage infrastructure.
Vijayanagar, (1300 BCE & 1500 CD),

C12: China’s Sorrow [Yangtze & Yellow rivers]

An interesting point in this chapter is that silt — which is a big issue in the Yellow River due to loess – can cause a lot of problems. It creates natural levies along the banks, which then, in times of high water, break and cause massive flooding.

…reading break…

C13: The Water Lilly Lords [Olmec, Maya, Aztecs]

A novel theme in this chapter has to do with the use of wetlands (banjos) for farming and water management. For example, the Aztecs constructed vast networks of drainage ditches, and Chinampas, artificial islands made of lake bottom mud and vegetation protected by ‘fences’ of tees.

The geographic/climatic regime of the area involved torrential rains, long dry periods, no rivers, and wetlands (bajos) that had to be drained and extensively developed (chinampas) to be farmable. There were generally no major rivers and few actual lakes.

The Maya and other mesoamerican civilizations were more loose federations of small kingdoms which constantly shifting power dynamics. As we’ve seen in other places, it appears that the elite maintained their status by using religion and ritual to cast themselves as mediators between the gods and the common people, an approach that worked well much of the time, but failed during droughts. “Where water was more abundant, centers tended to be less powerful.” (p. 265)

Once the population expanded enough that people had to move away from permanent waters sources, settlements were based around reservoirs: there was one reservoir per settlement, and its size capped the size of the settlement.

Climate change is implicated in the Maya collapse (700 – 1000 CE), with lake core drillings showing prolonged droughts after 760 CE, likely due to movements of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ICZ). Deforestation may also have contributed.

C14: Triumphs of Gravity [The Inca, et al]

An arid environment where most water comes from mountain runoff. Especially in Nasca, the arid Northern coast of Peru. Elsewhere (e.g. Machu Pichu) the geology resembles that of greece, where a layer of volcanics overlies a permeable limestone strata.

Peruvian coast, the land was composed of ash and tuff — and rivers often ran underground when they got to the plains. This, in turn, led to the development of sunken gardens so that the plants would be able to tap the water table, puquios, sunken irrigation ditches, and kocha, sunken reservoirs in to which the puquios fed.

Puquios share much in common with ganats, in that they are what archaeologists Katharina Schreiber and Josué Lancho Rojas call “hori-zontal wells.” A puquio is not a tunnel like a ganat, but an open trench that taps into the water-bearing layer of a stream underground. Most are relatively shallow, the deepest reaching a depth of about thirty-three feet (ten meters).
ibid, p 276.

…reading break…

C15: The Waters of Islam [Spain, Mahgreb, Syria]

Mohamed started Islam in the early 600’s. Shortly after his death, in 636, the jihad began in with astonishing speed — in less than 100 years, the Islamic empire extended around the southern rim of the Mediterranean and into southern Spain.
It sounds as though the Islamic empire did not develop new methods of water management, but was very effective at making use of old technologies and integrating them into larger systems. In general, water was a managed at a local or village scale.
The chapter also refers to the lush, well-watered islamic gardens, some of which were enormous in size.

C16: Lifting Power [Medieval Europe]

Medieval europe was primarily a rural world of subsistence farmers. They inherited water management technology from the Romans; some it broke down, and some of it was maintained.
The earliest complex water systems — using pipes — appeared in the 11th Century in monasteries and palaces in Germany.
Fish farming became a big business in medieval Europe
The chapter mentions the use and proliferation of mills for grinding grain — it is not clear if the Roman’s did this, or if it is a European invention, but there are things that imply it was inherited from Romans. They also ground malt for beer, crushed seeds for olive oil, and for crops such as mustard and sugar. Later mills were used for grinding bark to speed the extraction of tannin, and for driving grinding wheels for sharpening tools.
The chapter also discusses the use of millraces that increased the power and dependability of milling — it sounds as though these were European developments, although again this is not made explicit.
Mine pumps.
Use of mills to drive trip hammers and bellows for more industrial applications such as smelting and fulling and later spinning.

C17: Mastery?

This is sort of a wrap up chapter that takes us into the modern age. It skates over the surface of a lot of stuff, and skips entirely even more. It is not very satisfying, but on the other hand to give even a thorough cursory overview would probably take another book.

The one bit I found of interest here was his discussion of John Wesley Powell, the Colorado River explorer and a director of the United States Geological Survey. Fagan calls him an “honest man surrounded by corrupt operatives in and outside of the government.” The operatives were engaged in enticing poor settlers to occupy the southwest, provided they could irrigate their land within three years. Powell, who had a deep understanding of the southwest in general and the hydrology in particular submitted a 195 page document that proclaimed that agricultural methods used elsewhere would not work here, and that there was insufficient water to irrigate most of the West. This led to a firestorm of criticism fueled by speculators and politicians, and he was forced to resign from the USGS. This opened the path of the Los Angelas to carry out their water grab….

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