At a time when the global community finds it difficult to save clean water, researchers have discovered an ancient and innovative water-saving technology. While excavating a site at ancient city Girsu (located near the modern city of Nasiriyah in southern Iraq), researchers of the British Museum found that the Sumerians had discovered an innovative technology in order to save their civilisation. They have claimed that the "civilisation-saving" water channel found in Girsu is 4,000 years old.
It may be noted that a team of researchers had found "a mysterious structure" at the same place way back in the 1920s. They thought that it was an unusually shaped temple. However, members of the British Museum's Girsu Project have successfully traced the actual function of this mysterious structure built by people belonging to the Sumerian Civilisation. According to researchers, this is basically an ancient life-saving device or flume that was used to deliver water to distant places for agricultural purposes.
Researchers are of the opinion that vital canals might have dried up, threatening the Sumerians. This situation prompted them to create this anti-drought machine. Ebru Torun, an Architect and Conservationist working with the British Museum team in Iraq, stressed: "This is absolutely one of a kind. There is no other example of it in history, really, until the present day." According to Torun, archaeologists used to think that such technologies did not appear until the 18th Century AD. However, the new discovery has proven them wrong.
Meanwhile, Dr Sébastien Rey, an Archaeologist and the Project Leader in Iraq, explained that the Sumerian people might have seen "the canals drying up, silting up, one by one". He stated: "It is not just a bridge, it is an anti-drought machine, anti-collapse." Rey further said that the inscribed stone tablets made it clear that the Sumerians, who were facing an acute water crisis, had made a desperate attempt to save themselves.
Rey told the press that the Sumerians used to heavily depend on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers for water. As their agrarian society relied on advanced irrigation, they directed water from these two rivers to fields through various canals. This irrigation system provided them with the food required to sustain urban life. When the Sumerians started facing a water crisis, they built a water channel that was formed of two symmetrical mud-brick structures about 130ft long and 33ft wide. The channel also had 11ft-high walls arranged in two opposing curves bending outwards.
Reports suggest that the British Museum researchers discovered the life-saving machine with the help of a drone that clicked a number of images of the channel while flying over the village of Nasr. As per a report published in The Daily Telegraph in the last week of November 2023, the life-saving machine was located on a 19km-long canal and the device spanned a body of water. The machine has been dubbed the world's oldest known bridge. Ahead of the latest discovery, the Jisr al-Hajar Hajirah or the Caravan Bridge was considered as the oldest bridge in the world. Located in the ancient city of Edessa (near modern-day Urfa in Turkey), the Caravan Bridge was constructed around 850 BC.
Interestingly, the recent discovery has revealed that the structure, which channelled a 100ft-wide canal into a 13ft-wide passage, had created a feature known as the Venturi effect. Venturi effect refers to the increase in velocity of liquids when they pass through a constricted throat. Also, it can be put into practice with structures known as Venturi flume. However, scientists were unable to theorise Venturi effect until the late 18th Century. The Sumerians, living in Girsu, built this structure in order to get rid of the water shortage.
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