The impact of water on public health has been studied throughout history. Farming and settlement expansion led to the emergence of the challenge that mankind now faces: how to get drinking water for humans and animals, as well as how to manage the trash we produce. The availability of huge amounts of water has been regarded as a vital aspect of civilisation throughout history: Roman baths required a lot of water, as do modern Western society’s water closets and showers. For years, the value of high-quality drinking water has been recognised. The need for appropriate sanitation, on the other hand, was not recognised until the nineteenth century.
Egyptians and Mayans, as well as other ancient cultures, came to understand the value of water over time. Their economic structure was reliant on the Spring flooding, which produced the following year’s harvest. Egyptians knew this to the extent where they measured the Nile River’s water level each Spring and, if it was high, they would tax the farmers more because the farmer’s perceived crop would be higher than usual due to the silt-rich water transported by the Nile to the farmer’s irrigation system. Water was vital to the economies of the Middle Eastern, Asian, and European civilisations.
Indus Valley civilisation
The Indus Valley civilisation lasted from 3300 to 1300 BCE and from 2600 to 1900 BCE. This civilisation spanned the Indus River from what is now northeast Afghanistan, through Pakistan, and into northwest India. Along with Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Indus civilisation was the most widespread of the ancient world’s three early civilisations. The Indus Valley civilisation’s two main towns, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, were supposed to have emerged approximately 2600 BCE along the Indus River Valley in Pakistan’s Sindh and Punjab regions. In the 19th and 20th centuries, they were discovered and excavated, providing vital archaeological evidence about past cultures. The ancient Indus Valley civilisation in South Asia, which included modern-day Pakistan and north India, was notable for its infrastructure and hydraulic engineering, as well as various first-of-their-kind water supply and sanitation facilities.
Water Supply and Sanitation facility in the Indus Valley civilisation
The majority of Indus Valley homes were constructed of mud, dried mud bricks, or clay bricks. Public and private baths were found in the Indus Valley civilisation’s metropolitan regions. Sewage was disposed of using underground sewers made of carefully laid bricks, and a sophisticated water management system with many reservoirs was set up. Drains from houses were joined to larger public drains in the drainage systems. At Mohenjo-Daro, many of the structures had two or more stories. Water from the roofs and top levels’ bathrooms was conveyed to the street drains via enclosed terracotta pipes or open chutes.
Shadoofs and sakias were utilised to raise water to the ground level. Ruins such as Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan and Dholavira in Gujarat, India, had communities with some of the most advanced sewage systems in the ancient world. Drainage canals, rainfall gathering, and street ducts were among them. Stepwells have historically been utilised mostly in India.
A washing platform and a designated toilet/waste disposal hole were found in several courtyard dwellings. The toilet holes would be flushed by emptying a jar of water from the house’s central well into a communal brick drain, which would feed into an adjacent soak pit (cesspit). The solid materials in the soak pits would be drained regularly and may be used as fertiliser. In addition, most homes had their wells. Flood protection was provided by city walls.
Tigris-Euphrates River System
The Tigris-Euphrates River System is massive in southwest Asia. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which run almost parallel through the Middle East, make up this system. Mesopotamia (Greek: “Land Between the Rivers”), the lower portion of the territory they delineate, was one of the cradles of civilisation. The rivers usually are discussed in three parts: their upper, middle, and lower courses. The upper courses are restricted to the valleys and gorges of eastern Anatolia, through which the rivers descend from their sources, lying 6,000 to 10,000 feet (1,800 to 3,000 metres) above sea level. Their middle courses traverse the uplands of northern Syria and Iraq, at elevations varying from 1,200 feet (370 metres) at the foot of the so-called Kurdish Escarpment to 170 feet (50 metres) where the rivers empty onto the plain of central Iraq. Finally, their lower courses meander across that alluvial plain, which both rivers have created jointly. At Al-Qurnah the rivers join to form the Shatt al-Arab in the south-eastern corner of Iraq, which empties into the sea.
Conclusion
Nomadic men need water for drinking, dreaded floods, and fished and hunted in aquatic habitats in the distant past. He didn’t drill wells, irrigate the land, or build levees for flood protection until he became a sedentary agriculturist near the flat plains of major rivers. These responsibilities necessitated a well-organised society, which aided in the formation of nations and civilisations. Humans employed navigation, invented the river water wheel for irrigation, and mastered fishing technologies in the distant past.
Humans built water mills to grind wheat, invented drainage, and built canals, aqueducts, and pipes for water transportation in ancient civilisations. They invented aquifer water drainage by creating qanats, and they built water show buildings for aesthetic purposes.