The Cold War may be over, but all the treasure that went into defeating the Soviet empire, when Rocky just needed one punch, has not been wasted. Photos taken by some very old U.S.
satellites could be the key to finding some of humanity’s oldest artificial water systems. A team of archaeologists from the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology were interested in studying qanats, a system of water transportation that dates back 3,000 years. Finding these ancient, buried pipes is a challenge, so they came up with a novel solution: Use something new (artificial intelligence), and combine it with something old (satellite imagery taken when Stalin’s body wasn’t even cold).
The results offer a promising way forward to studying the engineering prowess of old civilizations. Qanats “represent a remarkable ancient invention for sustainable water distribution in arid environments,” the archaeologists wrote in the resulting study , published in the Journal of Archaeological Science . The system worked by extracting water from underground sources in elevated regions, which then flowed down the underground, human-made waterways towards open canals.
Service tunnels were also dug, allowing for the artificial waterways to be cleaned and maintained, and also to allow airflow. Qanats have been discovered around much of the globe, including China, the Iberian Peninsula, and western China. Because of their often ingenious design, they can be of great interest to archaeologists.
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