Petra's engineers turned flash floods into water supply

The Nabataeans built 200 dams, roughly 200 cisterns, and over 200 kilometres of ceramic pipe into cliff faces so precisely graded that 1990s civil engineers examining the system called it functionally optimal — built without pumps, without iron, into sandstone, in a region that receives less than 150 millimetres of rain per year.

This documentary covers the water engineering of Petra, Jordan, and how the Nabataeans transformed a lethal desert canyon into a city of 30,000 people.

The Siq, a 1,200-metre fracture in the rock with walls 80 metres high, can fill with a 4-metre flood wall in under 15 minutes; 23 tourists were killed inside it in 1963. The Nabataeans chose the site in the 4th century BCE and spent the next 300 years solving it. The dam at Wadi Musa, the Al Mutlim tunnel hand-cut 88 metres through solid rock under King Aretas IV, the dual carved channels with sediment traps at timed intervals - each piece redirected the flood rather than retreating from it. When Rome annexed Nabataea in 106 CE, they inherited the infrastructure intact and ran it unmodified for another 200 years. Earthquakes in the 4th and 6th centuries finally cracked what the floods never could.

Chapters:
0:00 Petra's real achievement was water, not stone
0:58 90 sq km of bare rock draining into one crack
1:16 The Siq: 1,200 m long, floods in under 15 minutes
1:31 1963: 23 tourists killed by a flash flood inside the Siq
1:38 Nabataeans chose this site in the 4th century BCE anyway
1:53 200 dams, 200 cisterns, 200 km of ceramic pipe
2:16 The dam at Wadi Musa and the Mutlim diversion
2:50 Dual channels carved at 4-degree gradient with sediment traps
3:26 1990s engineers called the system functionally optimal
3:44 Al Mutlim tunnel: 88 m of rock cut by hand to bypass the city
4:51 One storm, properly channeled, supplied the city for months
5:06 30,000 residents on less than 150 mm of rain per year
5:34 Romans used the Nabataean system unchanged for 200 years
5:42 Earthquakes in the 4th and 6th centuries finally broke it
6:13 Why the global flood myth appears next

Видео Petra's engineers turned flash floods into water supply канала LostCivz