Plumbing the ancient Mayan plumbing

Historians tell us the Spanish introduced pressurized water systems to the New World. But a
new study indicates that the Maya were building pressurized pipes between about 450 and
750 AD, in Palenque, a major Mayan city in modern-day Mexico.

The Maya built a large number of cities in the Yucatan, Guatemala and Belize, before their
cities were suddenly and mysteriously abandoned around 800. The Maya, whose descendants
still live in the region, wrote with hieroglyphs, had extensive knowledge of astronomy, and
their economy was strong enough to support cities such as Palenque, Chichen Itza and Cobal.
Until now, nobody had found evidence for pre-Spanish pressurized water in the New World,
say the two authors of the new study.
The evidence takes the form of a narrow constriction in the underground Piedras Bolas
aqueduct that routed water from a spring into Palenque. Unlike many Mayan cities, Palenque
was built in low mountains, with only about 2,200 hectares of reasonably flat land. Untamed
streams would gobble valuable real estate, so the Maya built limestone conduits to rout water
through the city.
In some cases, the Maya plastered the inside of conduits with stucco to prevent leaks. And
like modern builders, they Maya covered the conduits with stones that paved city streets and
plazas.

Streaming, but not video

The suggestive constriction was six meters below the spring that supplied the stone pipe, and
that height differential put the water under pressure, says co-author Christopher Duffy, a
professor of civil and environmental engineering at Penn State University. The system is
analogous to a modern water distribution system. The water tower produces a hydraulic
head, or water pressure. The pipes go underground, and back up into the home, where water
flows under pressure.

Photo: Kirk French; Penn State

Inside the Piedras Bolas aqueduct, a 200-square-centimeter constriction allowed the pipe to
be plugged near the exit to maintain water pressure.
The small opening at the bottom allowed the Maya to close off the conduit, so it would stay
full of water. Air in the system will neutralize the hydraulic head, Duffy says.
Unfortunately, the Palenque site has been disturbed, and tantalizing questions remain, Duffy
says. We dont know how they distributed the water from this point, but we cant see any
other purpose, other than as a control point in the buried conduit.

Paving paradise to put up a fountain or a toilet?

Archaeologists already know that the Maya had an extensive irrigation system, fed by nine
streams that ran through Palenque to the fields below.
The constricted conduit, one of nine, had a capacity of about 68,000 liters, and it alone could
have stored enough water to supply scanty rations for several thousand people for a week
during the dry season.
The pressurized pipe could have supplied a fountain where people could dip jars to collect
drinking water. But the putative fountain was probably beautiful, says co-author Kirk
French, a lecturer in anthropology at Penn State. Everything the Maya did at Palenque was
over the top, grandiose, in art and architecture.
Fountains also serve a social purpose, says French. They are in a central part of the city,
where people can fill jugs and socialize. Its funny, we refer to water-cooler conversations,
but it seems this has been going on for a very long time.

Did the Mayas pressurized plumbing have a more, er, sanitary function? We dont know
the exact application, admits Duffy, who specializes in hydrology, although we were
recently told, after the paper came out, that there are sweat baths, and perhaps toilets, in the
palace at Palenque.
In fact, the palace has four toilet-like features, French says, They are in a line, at the right
height, and share the same drain, but its hard to prove that they are toilets.
The Piedras Bolas aqueduct

Graphic: Reid Fellenbaum

The sloping aqueduct could have created water pressure to supply a drinking-water fountain
on the surface. During the rainy season, runoff overflows the paving, but the buried conduit
still carries water into the city.

The sanity of sanitation

Toilets or not, the newly discovered plumbing shows that the Maya are better engineers than
they ever got credit for, Duffy says. Although the Maya may have never seen pressurized
water flow in nature, people are inventive, especially when it comes to something as
important as water.
We think this is the first example in the New World, but a lot more will probably be
discovered, says Duffy. The Maya built like the Romans. They were practical. They would
build, if it failed, they would build again. Its a standard engineering strategy. Do something,
fail, learn, and do it again.
David Tenenbaum

Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System

Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System, (Persian: ) is an island city from the

Sassanid era with a complex irrigation system, situated in Iran's Khuzestan Province. It has
been registered on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 2009, as Iran's 10th cultural
heritage site to be registered on the United Nations' list.
The Shushtar water mills ones are the best ones which operation in order to use water in
ancient periods. These include a collection of dams, tunnels, ancillary canals watermills .
which utilized as IndustryEconomic collection. GarGar weir was built on the watermills and
waterfalls, that abstract don storm the GarGar branches and have function similar of up to
date dams to lead the water in the tunnel of watermills. Bolayti canal is situated in eastern
side of the water mills and water falls and the function of this canal is to supply the water
from behind the GarGar bridge to the east side of water mills and the channel the water of
river in order to prevent the damage to the water mills. Dahaneye shahr tunnel (city orifice) is
one of the three main tunnels which channeled the water from behind the GarGar weir into
the water mill and then run several water mills. Seh koreh canal channels the water from
behind the GarGar bridge into the western side. In water mills and water falls, there are
noticeable mills we can see a perfect model of haltering to run mills.
The Band-e Kaisar ("Caesar's dam"), an approximately 500-metre (1,600 ft) long Roman weir
across the Karun, was the key structure of the complex which, along with the Band-i-Mizan,
retained and diverted river water into the irrigation canals in the area. Built by a Roman
workforce in the 3rd century AD on Sassanid order, it was the most eastern Roman bridge
and Roman dam and the first structure in Iran to combine a bridge with a dam.

Parts of the irrigation system are said to originally date to the time of Darius the Great, an
Achaemenian king of Iran. It partly consists of a pair of primary diversion canals in the
Karun river, one of which is still in use today. It delivers water to the Shushtar city via a route
of supplying tunnels. The area includes Selastel Castel, which is the axis for operation of the
hydraulic system. It also consists of a tower for water level measurement, along with bridges,
dams, mills, and basins.
Then it enters the plain south from the city, where its impact includes enabling the possibility
of farming over the area called Mianb and planting orchards.[3] In fact the whole area
between the two diversion canals (Shutayt and Gargar) on Karun river is called Mianb, an
island having the Shushtar city at its northern end.
The site has been referred to as "a masterpiece of creative genius" by UNESCO.