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The Moorish invention that tamed Spain's mountains

bbc.com

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Re: The Moorish invention that tamed Spain's mountains

#51

I'm not sure why BBC finds it so fascinating that the Moors were able to dig ditches and channel water through them 500 years after the Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts in Spain ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_of_Segovia , https://fascinatingspain.com/place-to-visit/the-best-of/the-... ). All I can guess is that some civilizations are more in vogue than others. In fact when the Moors invaded Spain,…

The romans used these systems extensively as well...

Re: The Moorish invention that tamed Spain's mountains

#52

I'm not sure why BBC finds it so fascinating that the Moors were able to dig ditches and channel water through them 500 years after the Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts in Spain ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_of_Segovia , https://fascinatingspain.com/place-to-visit/the-best-of/the-... ). All I can guess is that some civilizations are more in vogue than others. In fact when the Moors invaded Spain,…

are theses acequias roman in origin as well? https://www.uv.es/cuadernosgeo/CG15_001_024.pdf

Re: The Moorish invention that tamed Spain's mountains

#53

I'm not sure why BBC finds it so fascinating that the Moors were able to dig ditches and channel water through them 500 years after the Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts in Spain ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_of_Segovia , https://fascinatingspain.com/place-to-visit/the-best-of/the-... ). All I can guess is that some civilizations are more in vogue than others. In fact when the Moors invaded Spain,…

> I'm not sure why BBC finds it so fascinating that the Moors were able to dig ditches and channel water through them 500 years after the Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts in Spain

I'm not sure why many think it is so fascinating the Romans built aqueducts. The Etruscans built hydraulic works as irrigation channels, drainage systems, dams, etc., while the Greeks had also built similar hydraulic structures long before Roman influence. And the Romans neither invented aqueducts nor built the first aqueducts. The first sophisticated long-distance raised conduit canal systems were constructed in the Assyrian empire in the 9th century BCE, half a millennium before the earliest Roman aqueducts.

Re: The Moorish invention that tamed Spain's mountains

#54

> All these customs are being lost and young people don't want to know about it I don't understand why this knowledge isn't being written down.

It does seem like the perfect thing to be documented in a GIS. Presumably you could even use high resolution satellite or drone footage to automate much of the data collection. Interview the caretakers in situ recording GPS locations and times. Perfect project for colleges

Re: The Moorish invention that tamed Spain's mountains

#55

I'm not sure why BBC finds it so fascinating that the Moors were able to dig ditches and channel water through them 500 years after the Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts in Spain ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_of_Segovia , https://fascinatingspain.com/place-to-visit/the-best-of/the-... ). All I can guess is that some civilizations are more in vogue than others. In fact when the Moors invaded Spain,…

Invading Muslim armies of that era typically left the major infrastructure and economies, and even the lower levels of political bureaucracies relatively intact. I'm interested in the claim that "when the Moors invaded Spain, they destroyed much of the Roman infrastructure in a fit of religious fanaticism so a great deal of it has been lost," do you have any sources for that?

Re: The Moorish invention that tamed Spain's mountains

#57

I'm not sure why BBC finds it so fascinating that the Moors were able to dig ditches and channel water through them 500 years after the Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts in Spain ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_of_Segovia , https://fascinatingspain.com/place-to-visit/the-best-of/the-... ). All I can guess is that some civilizations are more in vogue than others. In fact when the Moors invaded Spain,…

> I'm not sure why BBC finds it so fascinating that the Moors were able to dig ditches and channel water through them 500 years after the Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts in Spain I'm not sure why many think it is so fascinating the Romans built aqueducts. The Etruscans built hydraulic works as irrigation channels, drainage systems, dams, etc., while the Greeks had also built similar hydraulic structures lo…

> Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts /in Spain/

There were highly advanced aqueducts /in Spain/ long before the Moors came along.

Re: The Moorish invention that tamed Spain's mountains

#58

> All these customs are being lost and young people don't want to know about it I don't understand why this knowledge isn't being written down.

It does seem like the perfect thing to be documented in a GIS. Presumably you could even use high resolution satellite or drone footage to automate much of the data collection. Interview the caretakers in situ recording GPS locations and times. Perfect project for colleges

I bought the Foxfire series of books written by students who went around documenting the old rural ways before that was all lost to time.

Re: The Moorish invention that tamed Spain's mountains

#59

I'm not sure why BBC finds it so fascinating that the Moors were able to dig ditches and channel water through them 500 years after the Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts in Spain ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_of_Segovia , https://fascinatingspain.com/place-to-visit/the-best-of/the-... ). All I can guess is that some civilizations are more in vogue than others. In fact when the Moors invaded Spain,…

> in a fit of religious fanaticism

Umayyids (the "Syrians" who conquered Spain) and religious fanaticism don't go hand in hand: Most Umayyid rulers were political nihilists at best.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Caliphate#Legacy

Re: The Moorish invention that tamed Spain's mountains

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure why BBC finds it so fascinating that the Moors were able to dig ditches and channel water through them 500 years after the Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts in Spain I'm not sure why many think it is so fascinating the Romans built aqueducts. The Etruscans built hydraulic works as irrigation channels, drainage systems, dams, etc., while the Greeks had also built similar hydraulic structures lo…

> Romans had built highly advanced aqueducts /in Spain/ There were highly advanced aqueducts /in Spain/ long before the Moors came along.

> There were highly advanced aqueducts /in Spain/ long before the Moors came along.

It is the fallacy of simple location to try to pinpoint concrete details in explicit segments of space and time. It does not matter to Leibniz where Newton discovered calculus, only whether Newton did so first by up to a decade. It would be fallacy of simple location for Leibniz to claim, "but that was at Cambridge, not Paris." The Romans can no more claim validly they were first in Spain with the aqueduct than Leibniz can claim validly he was first in Paris with the calculus.

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