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Water Engineering in Ancient Civilizations

5,000 Years of History

Pierre-Louis Viollet author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:2nd Oct '17

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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Water Engineering in  Ancient Civilizations cover

This new book offers an engineer's perspective on the history of water technology and its impact on the development of civilisation. A Second Edition and translation into English of the French book "L'Hydraulique dans les Civilisations Anciennes".

Water professionals, engineers, scientists, and students will find this book fascinating and invaluable to their understanding of the fundamental role of water engineering in the development of civilization. The book abounds with descriptions of hydraulic techniques in the civilizations of the classical era and the Middle Ages, including illustrations and translated descriptions of ancient observers and authors. The work is unique in offering an engineer's perspective not only on the history of water technology, but also demonstration of the genesis of ideas and the transmissions of ideas and technology from one age and civilization to the next. The book is especially noteworthy for its efforts to situate hydraulic developments in their historical and intellectual context.

"One of the greatest challenges for society in the 21st century is, without doubt, the sustainable management of water. This is true both for developed and especially, as the millenium goals clearly state, for developing countries. A goal which can only be achieved, as history has proven, by adapting solutions to existing conditions.
This constitutes in itself a powerful reason to devote the time to read this book, for it will allow the reader to learn how men and women have done, in every age, what the circumstances required at time. This is a lesson that, unfortunately, we need to learn again nowadays. This is a lesson taught masterfully by Pierre-Louis Viollet, an engineer in love with history, and particularly with those times in which mankind's creativity was most evident. Creativity which, in so many cases, is driven by need. Creativity which is closely related to water. After all, water is essential for human life."

—Prof. Enrique Cabrera
Professor of Fluid Mechanics
Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain

ISBN: 9781138474475

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 707g

334 pages