Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Mysterious unimaginable structure
Interesting historical find from the Mayan era in Guatemala:
What a weird wild radical idea. I have trouble imagining it. A structure that magically holds water when there's too much rain, magically purifies it for drinking, and magically releases it when there's not enough rain? I wonder if we could learn something from this? No, we couldn't.
We won't learn from anything. We're fucked. ¶ 3:54 AM
According to UC’s Ken Tankersley, “It’s likely that the overall system of reservoirs and early water-diversion features, which were highly adaptable and resilient over a long stretch, helped Tikal and some other centers survive periodic droughts when many other settlement sites had to be abandoned due to lack of rainfall.”
Water collection and storage were critical in the environment where rainfall is seasonal and extended droughts not uncommon. ... At Tikal, they collected literally all the water that fell onto these paved and/or plastered surfaces and sluiced it into man-made reservoirs. For instance, the city’s plastered plaza and courtyard surfaces and canals were canted in order to direct and retain rainwater runoff into these tanks.
To help purify water as it sluiced into the reservoir tanks via catchment runoff and canals, the Maya employed deliberately positioned “sand boxes” that served to filter the water as it entered into the reservoirs.
Water management by the Maya included irrigation, which directly impacted how many people could be fed and overall population growth. Accordingly, it is essential to understand the array of canals and reservoirs at Tikal, which conserved water during the annual dry season and controlled floodwaters during the rainy months. These practices allowed the Tikal Maya to sustain relatively high population densities for several centuries.
What a weird wild radical idea. I have trouble imagining it. A structure that magically holds water when there's too much rain, magically purifies it for drinking, and magically releases it when there's not enough rain? I wonder if we could learn something from this? No, we couldn't.
We won't learn from anything. We're fucked. ¶ 3:54 AM
