Somalia ancient aqueducts

[Idilinaa]

Somalis are known to harbour technology and information, so when they die people can talk about how great they were, Somali region has always been plagued with boom and boost cycles, people die and so does the knowledge or it might survive in a lesser form, and slowly it diminishes, before the internet, we didn't have access all this information, even with so much information is behind a paywall, some books aren't even available without having a university email login.

No it hasn't been plagued by a boom and boost cycles at all. Infact the medieval developments actually lasted a very long time un-interrupted 800 + years, close to a millennium. Trade developments in Antiquity even longer. So there is no cycles.

And it was only like 1 century after the collapse late 1600s before trade and developments were re-energized during the 1800s and things started to pick up again, albeit wit global capitalist alterations.

Developments in Somalia really is not that much different from any other parts of the greator known world with human activity, which we can trace in the same manner through a collection of writings and archeology.

New cisterns and water tanks were built from the early modern period until today and are still called Barkad's and same goes for limetone wells, so i wouldn't say the knowledge was lost or it was part of a disappearing trend.

This is probably linked to a pastoral hydraulic culture, much like the grain storage system Bakhar trying to circumvent a semi arid environment by storing water and food.

 

[Midas]

No it hasn't been plagued by a boom and boost cycles at all. Infact the medieval developments actually lasted a very long time un-interrupted 800 + years, close to a millennium. Trade developments in Antiquity even longer. So there is no cycles.

And it was only like 1 century after the collapse late 1600s before trade and developments were re-energized during the 1800s and things started to pick up again, albeit wit global capitalist alterations.

Developments in Somalia really is not that much different from any other parts of the greator known world with human activity, which we can trace in the same manner through a collection of writings and archeology.

New cisterns and water tanks were built from the early modern period until today and are still called Barkad's and same goes for limetone wells, so i wouldn't say the knowledge was lost or it was part of a disappearing trend.

This is probably linked to a pastoral hydraulic culture, much like the grain storage system Bakhar trying to circumvent a semi arid environment by storing water and food.

Something that I've noticed is that cistern and water tanks dont seem to be common in premodern africa. Since I can't rember reading about them .

 

[Idilinaa]

Something that I've noticed is that cistern and water tanks dont seem to be common in premodern africa. Since I can't rember reading about them .

They were very common in Axum. Infact the very name reflects water engineering.

Another thing worth reading is this paper
Axumites was rooted in an intricate water systems as well. Large dams, cisterns and cannals etc. throughout.

They even say their capital name is rooted in water management.
Aksum: Water and Urbanization in Northern Ethiopia

https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/0d981960-bd2d-4fa7-b824-6129474372ac/content

While archaeological and environmental records illuminate some of
the ways water was used, local traditions and micro-toponyms emphasize
a connection between Aksum and water. The very origin of the name
“Aksum” may illustrate this bond: the syllable “ak-” may derive from
the Cushitic root for “water”, and “šum” is the Semitic term for “chief ”
(Munro-Hay, 1991: 96; Finneran, 2007a: 152). Other hypotheses favor a
western Agaw etymology (“akuesem”), meaning “water reservoir”. 13

The results of intensive archaeological surveying and excavations show changing patterns of settlement throughout the development of Aksum (Sernicola, 2008). Even though the number of people present in a given time is not known, it is commonly accepted that the ancient capital hosted a population of several thousands at the peak of its expansion (Michels, 2005; Fattovich, 2008). Aksumite settlements included towns, villages, isolated hamlets and, following the introduction of Christianity, churches and monasteries (see Sernicola, 2008

but outside of the horn it's only North Africa that i am aware of. Probably because it's used in areas where water is scarce , so they form a pastoral hydraulic culture to circumvent it.

And another thing i didn't point out is that it's usually largely a large scale governmental managed works by central authority. The dams, cannals, dykes and cisterns etc

hydraulic civilization, according to the theories of the German-American historian Karl A. Wittfogel, any culture having an agricultural system that is dependent upon large-scale government-managed waterworks—productive (for irrigation) and protective (for flood control).

So it's says a lot that this tipified both North Western and South Central Somalia in medieval times. They were expert water engineers and highly centralized.

 

[Midas]

They were very common in Axum. Infact the very name reflects water engineering.



but outside of the horn it's only North Africa that i am aware of. Probably because it's used in areas where water is scarce , so they form a pastoral hydraulic culture to circumvent it.

And another thing i didn't point out is that it's usually largely a large scale governmental managed works by central authority. The dams, cannals, dykes and cisterns etc



So it's says a lot that this tipified both North Western and South Central Somalia in medieval times. They were expert water engineers and highly centralized.

Yeah I meant to say outside the horn and North africa . Surprisingly even wells which obviously existed in the rest of subsharan africa. Is suprisingly hard to find information on.

 

[Idilinaa]

Yeah I meant to say outside the horn and North africa . Surprisingly even wells which obviously existed in the rest of subsharan africa. Is suprisingly hard to find information on.

To be honest most of Africa save for parts of NorthEast and North Africa was nerfed by geographical limitations.

So that might have limited the transfer of knowledge and technology to those areas which was isolated from eachother and the rest of the world.

 

[Midas]

To be honest most of Africa save for parts of NorthEast and North Africa was nerfed by geographical limitations.

So that might have limited the transfer of knowledge and technology to those areas which was isolated from eachother and the rest of the world.

Yeah this has been my view for a while now. When you realize that africa has no long navigable rivers. Tropical diseasses that kill horses and poor soils that become depleted after farming with no mechanism to replenish the nutrients in the soil. It becomes impossible to build large centralized states . Even the Moroccan army that conquered parts of songhai failed to build a centralized kingdom.

 

[Idilinaa]

Yeah this has been my view for a while now. When you realize that africa has no long navigable rivers. Tropical diseasses that kill horses and poor soils that become depleted after farming with no mechanism to replenish the nutrients in the soil. It becomes impossible to build large centralized states . Even the Moroccan army that conquered parts of songhai failed to build a centralized kingdom.

Saw another comment that also kinda relate to this:

But unlike Europe's great winter problem, and China and Asia's famine and drought. You didn't need to be innovative to survive in Ancient Africa.

Why invent stuff .....when you can literally loophole all the cattle and natural occurring crops with this stuff? Europeans and Asians had incentives to go beyond because it meant certain death.

In other places you had to be innovative to survive, irrigation methods, water harvesting systems, plant experiments(vavilov center: ), cattle or pack animal domestication and grain storage/trade systems etc

It's also usually having some mechanism to control and manage these types of resources, is how centralized states emerged from.