Posted on 03/13/2009 8:35:55 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
I forgot about that project 50 years is a very long time. I am surprised we started it.
Wow, nice! Thanks! Looks like they had good reason to gather more water.
Definitely! It’d be nice if they can find out just how long the project actually took. By digging down in multiple places and digging both ways toward the adjacent tunnellers, the tunnel could have been completed in much less time, and that method was used before this tunnel was begun. The Persians for example (actually they inherited the method from earlier people) had the qanat, which channeled water from wells over sometimes great distances in order to irrigate areas with no available ground water. For some reason — probably increasing population in a normally dry summer climate, but also possibly declining rainfall — the Mycenaean Greeks would here and there dig cisterns under the cities or at least the palace. At Gla OTOH, the rivers and streams were rechanneled around the edge of the basin, and shafts were dug, in order to dry out a lake and produce additional square miles of farmland. During early classical times, the tyrant on one island in the eastern Aegean had a shaft similar to this Roman one bored all the way through the central mountain in order to supply his growing city with water.
I hadn’t either. The Romans built so much that isn’t well known that we’ve no doubt got more surprises in store.
Sure - Incitatus.
Cooridor H in West VA.
I have gone in the great cisterns in southern Italy and could not believe that such large and great storage facilities could have existed in that time frame. Following are photos of one of the two that I have visited.
Yeah, the aquaducts were ingenious and prodigious works of engineering—but just getting the water from one place to another over long distances is just one part of the story.
It’s what they did with the water that is the real story. It didn’t just flood out the end into the desert or city.
No, they build underground water systems to provide fountains to serve whole neighborhoods, self-flushing sewers, public baths and in home water service to the rich folks.
Imagine the technical expertise to control and regulate that flow of water to make it operate smoothly without simply spewing out uselessly.
Fortune Is a River:
Leonardo Da Vinci and
Niccolo Machiavelli's
Magnificent Dream to Change
the Course of Florentine History
by Roger D. Masters
The Romans, they had it goin’ on.
Hard rock mining tends to cause innovations like you wouldn’t believe. A superb example are the old silver mines of Mexico built by the Spanish with Indian slaves. In that case, even iron was at a premium, every bit of it imported from Spain.
This meant that most of the mining was done with wood, water, leather, animal and human labor. One such mine in a mountain radically reduced the labor needed to haul away tailings by cutting an angular, downward shaft through the mountain, like a laundry chute. But the shaft was not a rough cut, having smooth walls.
Another later innovation was amusing. Because the refined silver had to be transported a long distance from the mine, robbery was a major problem. The solution was to craft a giant ball of silver with handles, so heavy it could only be pulled by a large team of horses, the only one of which was owned by the mining company.
When the caravan transporting the silver was attacked, they would abandon the silver, and ride off with the team of horses. This left the frustrated robbers with a huge ball of silver that they couldn’t move, or cut, or do anything with, long enough for the authorities to arrive.
Excellent...thanks for the photos.
Inebrius Maximus.
Not yet, but I am considering it.
Meanwhile -
In Vino, Veni, Veritas.
The “Duomo” cathedral in Milan (Mediolanum, to the Romans) was begun in th 5th century, and, although mostly complete by the 1890, it is still under contstruction.
Indeed, and typical of great cathedrals. La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona will take who knows how long. Even St. John the Divine in NYC is still very much incomplete.
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