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A unique method of obtaining underground water enabled the Garamantes to thrive in theSaharamore than 2,000 years ago , long after the part became a desert . But their demise is a cautionary fib for modern regions , like California , that rely heavy on ancient groundwater for their mod supply .
" They were favourable to have this world - class aquifer,“Frank Schwartz , a hydrogeologist at The Ohio State University , differentiate Live Science . " But it was a non - sustainable system , and it eventually ran out . "
Ruins from the Garamantian kingdom in what is now the southwestern region of Libya.
Schwartz , who read the hydrogeology of ancient culture , described the ascent and fallof the Garamantes on Oct. 16 at the Geological Society of America ’s one-year conference in Pittsburgh .
historian once thought the Garamantian kingdom was a minor power in the Fezzan region of North Africa — now in southwest Libya — until it was suppress by the expandingRoman Empirein the first century .
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A diagram of a qanat, a water-tunneling technology from ancient Persia that spread to Libya more than 2,000 years ago.
But since the 1960s , archaeologyhas revealed that the realm was larger and more sinewy than antecedently thought , with several city feed by pee delight by gravity in underground tunnel , or foggaras , from an ancient aquifer in the sandstone rock of the nearby highlands — a major feat of ancient engineering science .
" This was the first society that grew up in Africa without a river , " Schwartz articulate . " In Egypt , they had theNile flooding every year . But here there was no river , nothing . "
Saharan kingdom
Schwartz articulate the Garamantes go down from Neolithic oxen herder who lived in the area between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago , during the last " Green Sahara " phase — a relatively wet phase angle of the Saharan climate that come about roughly every 23,000 years and is due to change in Earth ’s rotational bloc .
But the mood change and the Sahara became"hyper - arid " by the time the Garamantian kingdom come up in about 400 B.C. , he say .
Archaeologists intend theGaramantes extracted groundwaterwith different engineering at different time , admit " shadoof " wells , in which water system is lifted in a pail using a counterbalanced lever , and " dalw " wells , in which piddle is lifted in a leather udder by harnessed animals .
But the greatest origination was the foggaras , which carried water supply to the Garamantian cities .
Schwartz pronounce the technology had originate inPersia , where the tunnel were bed as qanats , and was probably transmitted to the Garamantes by traders on desert caravans . But most Persian qanats drained aquifers that were replenish each class from run coke — something not seen in the Fezzan .
Instead , the Garamantian foggaras tap an ancient subterranean aquifer that had formed in the nearby sandstone highlands tens of million of years earlier and had been " topped up " during the Green Sahara form .
Schwartz notes it was only a topic of near fate — " serendipity " — that the Garamantes last near the aquifer and that the foggaras functioned at all . " This should n’t have bring here , " he said . But luckily , it did , and the water from the foggaras enabled the Garamantes to establish a potent kingdom in the heart of a desert .
Digging for water
Archaeologists have now identified more than 460 miles ( 750 klick ) of foggaras in the Fezzan area , and they were probably dug by people enslave by the Garamantians , Schwartz said . Some of the longest foggaras are more than 4 miles ( 6.5 kilometer ) long and cut through grit , gravel and solid sandstone ; perpendicular access shafts descend to the hush-hush tunnel roughly every 16 to 33 feet ( 5 to 10 meter ) .
Andrew Wilson , a prof of archeology of the Roman Empire at the University of Oxford who was n’t regard in the demonstration , say one of the oldest foggaras has been dated from organic matter in its clay - brick shaft lining to between 391 B.C. and 206 B.C. but many were unseasoned .
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Wilson tell Live Science in an email that it was n’t percipient how much water the foggaras educe from the ancient aquifer and to what extent the aquifer was refill by the region ’s periodic pelting .
But there were " star sign of focus " that reflect a falling water table , such as a deepening and extending of the foggaras , he order . But such measures could not compensate for the aquifer ’s overuse : " Ultimately the foggaras failed after several C . "
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The water level of the aquifer finally fall below the levels that it could run into the foggaras , leading to a declination in the Garamantian kingdom after about A.D. 100 , Schwartz said . But the region ’s cloak-and-dagger H2O is still being exploit by Libya’sGreat Man - Made River Project , which began in the 1980s and now supplies water to farmland and million of people in the north of the country , he enjoin .
The death of the Garamantes illustrate the dangers of exploiting ancient supply of groundwater , as is now being donein Californiaandmuch of Iran , Schwartz notice .
" The Garamantes had serendipity for a while , but it was not sustainable , " he allege .
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