> Ancient beliefs, behaviors and norms – what archaeologists call culture – were fundamentally integrated into technological solutions in this part of Peru in ancient times. Isolating and removing the tools from that knowledge made them less effective.
Ancient beliefs, behaviors and norms may have helped indigenous people perpetuate the solutions/technologies. Studying and understanding those may help people - today - to more quickly understand those solutions. But it's not like a thorough understand ing and application of these technologies - today - require us to "maintain technology and culture coupling" as this _archeologist professor_ implies.
The Spanish may have made wrong assumptions at first and failed to replicate the solution, but if we still see it being used today, that's because the colonist eventually learned - without perpetuating the culture (not to the same extend as the indigenous)
I think a lot of differences between populations can be explained by differences in culture values. I don't see too much research on this ever.
The inca aqueduct network is seriously impressive even in the current age. Some of it almost a thousand years old and still transporting spring water miles with no pumps, without a civilization to maintain it.
IDK if it was inka but I was in a town called Ollataytombo or something like that for a week and they had this adorable little aqueduct that ran straight through town and people washed their clothes and whatnot in it. Loved how a lot of those mountain towns had them.
How doesn’t it just immediately become overgrown with vegetation?
Meanwhile the average lifetime of modern infrastructure is what, 50 years ?
Part of the shorter lifespan is that our cities grow much faster. Why build infrastructure that last 200 years if it needs to be ripped up in 50 due to no longer meeting population demands?
When they transported 100% of the output of a spring there’s no need to update the infrared as a city grows there was no way to go past 100%. Dams have the same kind of limits and are regularly designed for 150+ year lifetimes. The Hoover Dam is just about to turn 90 and it’s likely to last another 100 years.
Quite a lot of the built environment is designed for 100+ year lifespans. When it isn’t there’s often very good reasons. It’s kind of amazing we get road bridges to last as long as they do when you consider the physical and chemical assault they’re constantly under all while trying to minimize weight and cost.
And no mention in the article of the ways of culture that managed the systems.
There was a lot of insistence that the indigenous method was better, but no actual evidence that it was, nor even arguments as to why it would be (besides some vague allusions to it being “more flexible”).
A lot of these noble savage narratives emerge from Latin American studies (history, archaeology, literature, etc.), particularly among Mexican and American-educated academics. There is truth to the idea that the complexity of indigenous systems is unappreciated by the general public, but there’s always this underlying fetishization of a pseudo-magical indigenous “way of knowing” contrasted with the (historically far-better performing) European scientific method. Indigenous cultures are redeemed from European military conquests by insisting that the European way of knowing is myopic and selfish (being focused on profit over sustainability, the individual over the community, etc.) in contrast to the indigenous way of knowing, which is holistic and communitarian.
The author does have publications related to these irrigation systems, though, so maybe she has a valid point to make and the article just didn’t land for me.
If you study this stuff in the americas it’s depressing as the Spanish in particular slaughtered people and culture so completely and unimpeded for so long. The evil and barbarism of this colonial episode is difficult to fathom. The 20th century horror show of slaughter ran in relatively short episodes… this imperial era ran for hundreds of years.
Because you’re left with archeological evidence, whose interpretation is always very conservative, and limited oral tradition, it’s easy to veer into legend, because honestly that’s that who have to work with.
The Spanish, the Portuguese, and most importantly, diseases that killed massive proportions of the population.
I imagine this is just a symptom of infallible argument/humanities departments rewarding group think narratives (colonialism = definionally ultimate evil) with grant money. Doesn't take long for academics to understand the game.
Same thing with climate change, i've come across a pile of random definitely-not-climate-science papers (macre econ development divergence in hipanola, property rights in subsaharan africa, unrelated culutral anthropoly etc) that allude to climate change as the key driver for the phenomenon observed. Clearly NSF and NIH wanted a very certain set of content published.
The claim actually made was that culture, not just technology, is what made these irrigation systems successful. It's an interesting insight.
Perhaps we can learn lessons from ancient cultures about how we might be able to efficiently manage our resources and achieve more with what is available. Is that so far fetched an idea?
I understand what you’re saying. I’m not sure that the distinction is all that important, however. Culture is just a form of technology.
> Perhaps we can learn lessons from ancient cultures about how we might be able to efficiently manage our resources and achieve more with what is available. Is that so far fetched an idea?
I don’t mean to imply that European models get everything right, but I think it would be far-fetched to bet against these models; historically, they’ve worked, and they’ve worked far better than any other model. The author does have a paper she linked to (which I missed on my first reading), so she might have a more compelling case to make than I originally assumed.
Can you point to an engineering feat in modern times which is still functional after hundreds of years of neglect?
Even if academia is swinging to a "too respectful" position (which I would dispute), the lack of respect in your position is certain.
It seems like that's an impossibility, since you would need to find something in the current era that has been abandoned, rather than decommissioned...
There are a few examples that might fit, some earthworks, (tunnels, breakwaters, dams) and navigation markers come to mind (costal, but we also put retro reflectors on the moon).
> Can you point to an engineering feat in modern times which is still functional after hundreds of years of neglect?
Off the top of my head:
1. Various aqueduct systems constructed by the Roman Empire are still in use today.
2. Persian qalats.
3. The Grand Canal in China.
4. Roman Roads
5. Hawaiian aquaculture systems
6. Aboriginal Australian fish traps
Monumental architecture (e.g. the Pyramids) would make the list substantially longer.
> Even if academia is swinging to a "too respectful" position
The issue isn’t that they are attributing accomplishments to these civilizations, but instead that they are attributing these accomplishments to a way of knowing that is purportedly superior to that of the Europeans, which is just farcical when you consider that every modern technology has either been invented or scaled based on European models of thinking (e.g. the scientific method, mass production, free market capitalism, etc.)
Like I said, this is mostly just a product of Mexican and American humanities departments being populated by people with an axe to grind; there aren’t any STEM graduates in South America concerned with the mystical knowledge that their ancestors are purported to have possessed.
I am not sure of their operational status today, but in Medieval Western Europe, it was Carmelite communities who built aqueducts; even as they struggled to reform themselves during the Counterreformation, religious communities were undertaking large-scale engineering projects, because they controlled enough labor workforce, as well as technology and supply chains, to make that happen.
I would be unsurprised if the Carmelite Orders likewise invested significant maintenance in the old Roman construction, and learned from it as well.
> the lack of respect in your position is certain.
Pointing out there are other possibilities isn't a lack of respect. If you believe A or B could have happened, you see someone say B happened, it is fair to say that A might have happened as well, that doesn't mean you believe B couldn't have happened.
> Can you point to an engineering feat in modern times which is still functional after hundreds of years of neglect?
Why would anyone build something only to neglect it? If one of the requirements was "it shall work for 500 years and never be maintained", then I'm sure you could get plenty of things designed and built for that requirement. It's just that it's a lot more expensive and not particularly useful, so nobody bothers.
perhaps "modern times" are modern because they adapt to the times, innovate, and replace what is old with what is new in pursuit of improvement.
You might look no further than Spain. There are dams built by the Romans which are still operating.
Of course nothing that's literally from the modern period is centuries old, but that's a tautology!
I see your point and I agree. Grabber “the dawn of everything” comes to mind on that “noble savage” phenomenon
That being said : there is something to be said about the Spanish cargo culting those canals in that specific plain… and failing to maintain it.
While we know it was fertile for generation before.
The article hint at private ownership being a factor? I could see that.
But 100% agree : I spend the article asking “ok, what is the culture then”
But it looks like it happen: irrigation work Spanish take over irrigation it stop working
I suspect sabotage was a bit factor, too.
Very well stated.
It's really weird to come across such articles, because they always add this mystic to these cultures that actually ends up coming across as the generic "in touch with nature" noble savage archetype
I mean, weren’t they? My kids can name more superheroes and Pokémon than animals and plants. My neighbors don’t notice when it doesn’t rain in March and April (when there should be 22 rainy days) and get annoyed when it does because it ruins the nice weather.
The disconnect between observation and understanding is the whole point; without western ideas like trends, records, and measurement, you can have no better understanding than, "sometimes wet, sometimes not".
The only part in tune with nature is that in bad periods the population dies back.
The Spanish colonists would have no problems with those things though, they just were out of their element there but people were in touch with nature almost everywhere until very recently.
Why would your neighbors worry about rain, unless they are farmers or otherwise directly impacted?
We've generally abandoned "being in touch with nature" for focusing on specific niches, and it's so incredibly more efficient that you can have large groups of people who focus on systems based on purely made up things, like sports.
If they both needed the probability of rain three days from now, who do you think would fare better, the ancients with their ancient wisdom, or your neighbors with modern sensors and meteorological models?
I would say they would worry if they were even remotely in touch with nature.
It fits today's narrative better.
> The Moche and Chimu canal was tied to a complex labor system that synchronized cleaning and maintenance and prioritized the efficient use of water.
There's also a link which points to more details but it doesn't look to be accessible: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/a...
That single sentence, which is the totality of the description given in the long and winding article, doesn't actually explain anything - the efficient use of water is the obvious goal of any irrigation system, especially in a desert. But how did it efficiently use water? The only hint of information is "synchronized cleaning and maintenance", and not a word on synchronized how or with what, or why this should help.
It's like describing how a car works with just "it is efficiently designed to help you travel faster, and uses skilled maintenance workers".
>While they may be identical in form, a Spanish canal isn’t a Moche canal.
>Spanish canals operated in a temperate climate and were managed by individual farmers who could maintain or increase their water flow. The Moche and Chimu canal was tied to a complex labor system that synchronized cleaning and maintenance and prioritized the efficient use of water. What’s more, Moche canals functioned in tandem with floodwater diversion canals, which activated during El Niño events to create niches of agricultural productivity amid disasters.
The second paragraph belies the previous: Spanish canals obviously were not "identical in form" when you can point out so many differences.
But it would also be pretty unreasonable to equate the early Spanish colonists, who were a few pirates and scoundrels that used iron and horses to conquer and control an empire where they were outnumbered by a thousand to one, to the modern Peruvians. Many lessons have been learned since then and modern Peru's political problems pale in comparison to the brutality of the sixteenth century.
The more likely reason that the situation is different today is just that Peru's population density (34 million in the country) and agricultural production vastly exceeds anything that existed under the Inca (maximum about 12 million across an empire that included parts of modern Ecuador and Bolivia). The Peruvians themselves are no stranger to attempting to copy the pre-colonial infrastructure practices, with mixed results. Of course if you grow less, you can better avoid running out of water. But this is no solace.