[HN Gopher] Qanat
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Qanat
Author : vinnyglennon
Score : 392 points
Date : 2023-11-11 17:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| chis wrote:
| Crucial scrabble word
| kristianp wrote:
| I came by to say this. You'd want to know about "qi" and "qat"
| too of course.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| As someone entirely unfamiliar with the word until now, the
| first pronunciation inside my head, though immediately deemed
| wrong of course, was /CUE-ah-not/.
| userbinator wrote:
| That's not surprising, since Qanon (what came to mind when I
| saw this word) is pronounced with the leading CUE as well.
| eganist wrote:
| Related ancient Persian technology: the yakhchal
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l) (a.k.a the ice
| pit).
|
| We still use the same word in farsi for refrigerators today.
| pvg wrote:
| We still use half of the same word in English! 'yakh' and 'ice'
| are cognates.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%DB%8C%D8%AE
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I love learning cognates that don't really look it. Acadian
| and Cajun is another favorite, although I'm not sure if it
| counts if they're both used in English.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Try saying "Acadian" quickly, and you can see pretty easily
| how it might elide into "Cajun".
|
| Uh-cay-dee-yan
|
| Cay-dee-yan
|
| Cage-dee-yan
|
| Cay-jee-yan
|
| Cay-jun
|
| Speech gets lazier with repetition. Ask any native of New
| Orleans how their city's name is pronounced: the majority
| will say something like "Noo-ahh-lins" or even just
| "Nah'lins".
| djbusby wrote:
| New Orleans. Outside it's four syllable. Inside it's one
| aixhole wrote:
| We use the other half too. 'Chal' and 'hole' are cognates as
| well.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%DA%86%D8%A7%D9%84#Persian
|
| YakhChAL: Ice-hollow.
| pvg wrote:
| They might be but that link doesn't seem to say that.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| There are many cognates between Farsi and English. Here's
| my list of really obvious ones:
|
| Mani/Meaning
|
| Dobare/Again (Double)
|
| Vacal/Vocal
|
| Lab/Lip
|
| No/New
|
| Baradar/Brother
|
| Beitar/Better
|
| Dokhtar/Daughter
|
| Mord/Dead (i.e mortal)
|
| Pose/Pose
|
| Setareh/Star
|
| Recid/Received
|
| Dar/Door
|
| Darije/Degree
|
| Band (Bebande, mibandam)/To bind
| jahnu wrote:
| I visited several of these things in Yazd. Super fascinating
| technology (and the city in general too).
| jagaerglad wrote:
| Just a minor off topic pet peeve of mine, but why not keep
| calling the language that Persians speak "Persian" in English?
| Just how it doesn't feel entirely right to suddenly start
| calling Spanish "Espanol" instead in English, or Swedish as
| "Svenska" and so on. I've met so many people not realizing the
| endonym "farsi" is just a (for some reason) new word in English
| used for the already well established name for the Persian
| language
| animal_spirits wrote:
| I have only ever heard of the language referred to as Farsi
| in English. We call the language that Mexicans speak,
| Spanish, not Mexican.
| xcdzvyn wrote:
| Funnily enough it's called Spanish because it's from Spain.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > We call the language that Mexicans speak, Spanish, not
| Mexican
|
| In the same way that we use "French" for the language
| spoken by the Quebecois as well as that spoken by the
| French, we use "Spanish" for the one spoken by Mexicans as
| well as that spoken by the Spanish, sure. (Same as we use
| "English" for the language spoken by Americans as well as
| the one spoken by people in England.)
|
| But that's not what's going on with Farsi.
| FabHK wrote:
| Yes, because they speak Spanish. But you call it Spanish,
| not "Espanol". That's the point.
|
| There are perfectly fine English words for what the Spanish
| call "Espanol" ("Spanish"), and what the Germans call
| "Deutsch" ("German"), and what the Indonesians call "Bahasa
| Indonesia" ("Indonesian"), and what the French call
| "Francais" ("French"), and what the Chinese call "Pu Tong
| Hua " ("Mandarin"), and what the Persians call "Farsi"
| ("Persian").
| eganist wrote:
| Farsi is solely the name of the language. Persian could
| describe the language or a number of other things, such as
| the culture, the people, etc.
|
| Farsi and Persian are interchangable in the context of the
| language, and plenty of Persian Americans prefer using
| "Persian" to name the language rather than Farsi (this is
| especially common among persians who refer to themselves as
| "Persian," and I _think_ a lot of it is because "Farsi" is
| associated with "Iranian" which has a less ideal connotation
| associated with it in the West today). But it's not
| universal, and both are pretty widely accepted.
|
| That's my understanding. I'm not versed in the historical
| details though. There's probably a Persian culture professor
| lurking who can offer a more informed answer.
| yen223 wrote:
| I've only ever known the language as being called "Farsi". I
| don't think I've ever heard the language being called
| "Persian".
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's a very interesting question. I've only ever heard it
| referred to as Farsi, so I didn't even know there was another
| option. Intriguingly, Wikipedia provides plenty of
| information, which seems to support your position (italics
| mine):
|
| "Farsi, which is the Persian word for the Persian language,
| has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more
| often to refer to Iran's standard Persian. _However, the name
| Persian is still more widely used._ The Academy of Persian
| Language and Literature has maintained that _the endonym
| Farsi is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that Persian
| is the appropriate designation of the language in English,_
| as it has the longer tradition in western languages and
| better expresses the role of the language as a mark of
| cultural and national continuity. Iranian historian and
| linguist Ehsan Yarshater, founder of the Encyclopaedia
| Iranica and Columbia University 's Center for Iranian
| Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on
| Iranology, rejecting the use of Farsi in foreign languages."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_language#Name
| peyton wrote:
| It's part of our overseas propaganda efforts to use
| American linguistic hegemony to void cultural and
| historical ties with countries we aren't friends with. The
| language is Persian, not Farsi.
| candiodari wrote:
| I guess only the Italians and the Russians have American
| friendship.
|
| French in French = Francais
|
| German in German = Deutsch
|
| Spanish in Spanish = Espanola
|
| Dutch in Dutch = Nederlands (old name: Diets, I might
| add)
|
| Irish in Irish = Gaelic (actually kind-of refers to 2
| languages, but ...)
|
| Swedish in Swedish = Svenska
|
| Norwegian in Norwegian = Norsk
|
| Finnish in Finnish = Suomalainen
|
| (Note: most of these have various accents and special
| characters that aren't correctly typed here, as well as a
| bunch of nuances that really should be there)
| paledot wrote:
| I would be quite happy if we had a word for the language of
| France that was distinct from the adjective. It's not
| uncommon that I need to pause and clarify (typically "French
| people", that is, native francophones vs. residents of
| France). Not sure why more ambiguity is to be sought after.
| Liquid_Fire wrote:
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I would never interpret
| "French people" to mean anything other than people from
| France (not necessarily resident in France though). If
| we're referring to language then it would be something like
| "French speakers", or "native French speakers" if you want
| to be specific.
| simbolit wrote:
| He meant "French" primarily means "French people" and
| only secondarily "French language".
|
| I'd try to distinguish this with a definite article, like
| "the French" vs "French", but what do I know?
| zeristor wrote:
| The irony.
|
| I am a bit indignant at having to call English British
| English, why isn't it English English; to differentiate it
| from American English, decorated with a little US flag as a
| visual guide.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| To include English as spoken in Wales, Scotland, Ireland,
| Cornwall, etc. "Celtic archipelago English" is a mouthful,
| although it would be more accurate when including Ireland.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Seriously. OP doesn't seem to realize that someone in
| Ireland may also be a "bit indignant" at suggesting it's
| merely "English" English.
|
| British English means it's English as written in the
| British Isles.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Someone in Ireland may reasonably also have a problem
| with "British Isles", but that's harder to fix.
| Penyngton wrote:
| Here's a link you can use to explain the topic to people who
| make this mistake: https://www.cais-
| soas.com/CAIS/Languages/persian_not_farsi.h...
| parentheses wrote:
| I also stumbled upon this from here:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classifi...
|
| It is used to describe climates in the above article.
| userbinator wrote:
| Relatedly, the word "icebox" also used to be commonly used to
| refer to refrigerators in the early 20th century, because
| before the advent of domestic refrigerating machines, ice in a
| (insulated) box was used.
| inductive_magic wrote:
| Wonderful video which is somewhat related:
| https://youtu.be/twAP3buj9Og?si=muhCC08RsFzofObB
| archon1410 wrote:
| It seems the video is making rounds yet again--it was also
| recommended to me by the algorithm a few days ago.
| guwop wrote:
| amazing vid!
| pciexpgpu wrote:
| This entire thread is fantastic and a great learning
| opportunity. Sent me spiraling through Wikipedia pages. This
| video is really great too!
| adriand wrote:
| Agreed. Reading/watching this stuff reminded me of my
| experience visiting Morocco a few years ago. We travelled
| through the Atlas mountains and into the desert regions
| bordering the Sahara and then into the Sahara itself. I was
| struck by how everywhere we went, you could see signs of how
| people had tried to extract water from what appeared to be an
| utterly arid environment, whereas back home in Ontario,
| everywhere you look there is infrastructure designed to
| manage large amounts of it. Our biggest water-related problem
| is that we often have too much of it, a problem that seemed
| scarcely imaginable over there.
| adhdbrain wrote:
| This was an incredible video. Thanks for sharing!
| extensis wrote:
| Video from Asianometry about Iran's water problems, mentioning
| quanat: https://youtu.be/watch?v=aaEhNTpvEN8
| xeonmc wrote:
| What a coincidence, recently saw it on Asianometry's video about
| the Iran water crisis.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaEhNTpvEN8
| brabel wrote:
| > By 400 BCE, Persian engineers had mastered the technique of
| storing ice in the middle of summer in the desert.
|
| The ingenuity of ancient people cannot be overstated. Some of us
| think that before around 1800, everyone still lived in primitive
| conditions... I guess this is an awesome counterpoint.
| ben_w wrote:
| Now I'm wondering if the sum total of all inventions prior to
| 1800 is more or less than the total since 2000, to pick a
| random year with no particular reason for the choice.
|
| And how would you weight the importance of the inventions?
|
| I think ice is nice -- but autoclaves, antibiotics, and
| anaesthesia during surgery are much more important.
| hnbad wrote:
| "Ice is nice" is severely understating the importance of
| refrigeration. The ability to preserve fresh foods is easily
| up there with penicilin.
| trevyn wrote:
| There are a lot of ways to preserve food without
| refrigeration.
| simbolit wrote:
| There are a lot of ways to stay healthy without
| penicillin.
|
| Doesn't mean penicillin isn't super-helpful. Doesn't mean
| refrigeration isn't super-helpful.
| woodruffw wrote:
| These kinds of comparisons are category errors: you don't get
| to autoclaves and antibiotics without the civilization-level
| changes that get you irrigation and ice in summer.
| ben_w wrote:
| I don't deny that, my claim is more of "what counts as
| 'primitive conditions'?"
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| They had antibiotics. Democedes used apples fermented in hay
| to produce something which contained penicillin when he
| performed the first known masectomy of Darius' wife Atossa
|
| I can't find the source right now but it's similar to
| Peruvian Tocosh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocosh
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Now I'm wondering if the sum total of all inventions prior
| to 1800 is more or less than the total since 2000
|
| Not sure why you have the gap between 1800 and 2000. But the
| number of things 'invented' before 1800 is massive in terms
| of the broad categories of things we consider essential to
| life e.g. (in no particular order) fire, transport, cooking,
| metal working, agriculture, animal husbandry, buildings,
| weapons, health care, books, paintings, music, optics, etc.
| There are very few things after 2000 of such importance.
|
| I suspect that if you had a single cut-off at 1800, 'before'
| might still win, if we stick to these high-level categories,
| rather than, say, patent applications.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Your question is essentially unknowable, as the definition of
| invention is unclear, and we have no hope of estimating
| quantity with anything like the precision we have with modern
| recordkeeping (we can't estimate how many patents would have
| been produced in the 10th century had the modern patent
| system existed back then). Recall that there's a lot of
| innovation in the "little things"; note that a parallel post
| is talking about different shapes of spearheads, and each of
| those variations would definitely correspond to a new patent
| in the modern patent system. At the same time, most written
| sources throughout history are from elites, who give very
| little thought to what the working classes are doing, and
| thus tend to ignore innovation that does exist.
|
| My gut instinct is that innovation rate throughout history is
| largely constant on a per-capita basis, although I would
| admit that probably some industries are more or less
| innovative at various stages or in history. Through that
| lens, the fact that you're looking at >10x total person-years
| pre-1800 compared to post-2000 means that I'd feel rather
| comfortable opining that there were more total innovations
| before 1800 than after 2000.
| geraneum wrote:
| "autoclaves, antibiotics, and anesthesia during surgery are
| nice but the super intelligent AI that found the cure for all
| illnesses and the ability to go back in time and etc. are
| more important."
|
| Someone in x thousand years from now.
| ben_w wrote:
| Or even a hundred. The "singularity" analogy isn't one I
| favour[0] but the radical changes the idea represents would
| make today seem like a primitive ancient world to those
| that come after it.
|
| [0] https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2022/09/20/not-a-
| singu...
| vacuity wrote:
| It's weird to me how compressed recent history actually is.
| Unix was 1970, LISP was 1960, the US Civil Rights Act was 1964.
| The Ottoman Empire was dissolved in the 1920s. At the same
| time, there's already so much on the Internet. The iPhone was
| released in 2007.
| zabzonk wrote:
| also mentioned in "Dune", the novel, along with other
| arabic/persian words.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I somehow managed to read most of _Children of Dune_ without
| looking up what a qanat is. Since then I 've remembered it
| specifically for use in Scrabble, but over 20 years later I've
| still yet to get the opportunity to use it (I don't play
| Scrabble much any more).
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| The tunnel of Eupalinos is also an interesting reference. From
| before 550bc on the island of Samos, it was an irrigation tunnel
| through a mountain. They started digging on both sides and
| managed to meet in the middle just 60cm off. Pythagoras was just
| a boy at that time, but I like to think he was influenced.
| miohtama wrote:
| Qanat will be history soon. Iran, like West USA, has exploited
| available water resources and there is simply no water left.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scarcity_in_Iran
| aixhole wrote:
| The qanat system was effectively destroyed by the Mongols when
| they invaded Iran centuries ago. That contributed to the
| desertification of Iran and its overall decline.
| krisoft wrote:
| Hmm. How did the mongols do that? Qanat's are not magical
| water making devices, they are just a long tunnel which leads
| the water already in the ground to the surface. Even if the
| Mongols were actively demolishing the tunnels the water is
| still there underground.
|
| Maybe there is some second order effect I am not aware of,
| but this statement sounds fishy to me.
| aixhole wrote:
| Iran was basically a throphy throne for Turkic strongmen to
| roleplay Persian King of kings for most of its post-Islam
| history. I assume the collapse of a strong nation state
| post mongols destroyed any hope of a top level national
| reconstruction effort. Water was sourced from north and
| flowed down south. It's like saying there we still have
| coal when someone has come and ripped up the entire railway
| network. More aptly, think Christmas lights in series. Now
| imagine the lights are little oasis towns, and far flung.
| Water stops flowing one day and it never comes back. That's
| likely what happened. (Also remember that Iran is ~1/3 the
| size of US and the dry parts are in the interior.)
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Mongols did this throughout the Islamicate world and did it
| to South Asia also. They destroyed tons of existing
| infrastructure and by the time civilizations here started
| recovering, they had to deal with an ascendant Western
| Europe.
| startages wrote:
| Qanat is an Arabic word which translates to "Canal", but it's a
| little more traditional and made to transfer water for long
| distances between a source of water and an agriculture field for
| irrigation.
| geraneum wrote:
| A little side note, the original name of Qanat in Persian is
| "Kariz".
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Curious, seems to me that they all come from the same
| Akkadian (ancient Semitic language) root:
|
| _" From earlier form khhryz (/ kahrez /) or khhryz (/ kahrez
| /), from Middle Persian [Book Pahlavi needed] (ksryc / kahrez
| /) (compare Manichaean Middle Persian (qhryz / kahrez /,
| "qanat"), Parthian (qhryc / kahrez /, "qanat") and Khunsari
| khyryz (/ keiriz) /), or compound of khh (kah, "straw") + ryz
| (rez, "to throw"). They used to throw straws in qanats' wells
| to see how rapid the movement of water is for repair
| purposes."_
|
| Vs Latin "canal":
|
| _" For _cannalis, from canna ("reed, cane"), from Ancient
| Greek kanna (kanna, "reed").*
|
| And the Greek in turn comes, apparently, from Akkadian
| (Semitic) _" qanum"_ "reed".
|
| And so I'd guess the Arabic 'qanat' either from either
| Akkadian or from its own Semitic vocabulary or was borrowed
| back in from Greek.
|
| Nifty.
| dalbasal wrote:
| How sloped are water tables, typically?
| simbolit wrote:
| Rough answer: as sloped as the terrain on top.
|
| Better answer: it depends.
|
| Best answer: find your local equivalent of
| https://www3.twdb.texas.gov/apps/WaterDataInteractive/Ground...
| SoapSeller wrote:
| Also see Seville attempt to cool public spaces using modern
| variant:
|
| https://cartujaqanat.com/
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I first encountered this concept in a Sierra Adventure game:
|
| https://youtu.be/rd-epKNOo0U?t=3049
| nagonago wrote:
| A nearby shopping center used to be called Qanat until it got
| bought out and renamed to the very generic (Corporation) Square a
| few years ago. Everyone still just calls it Qanat because it's
| such a cool word, with an interesting history!
| simbolit wrote:
| I guess it is called "NAME OF THE CORPORATION square", but,
| well, isn't "corporation square" a great name for a mall!
| saagarjha wrote:
| The Wikipedia article mentions this part twice but it doesn't
| seem to explain why:
|
| > The system has the advantage of being resistant to natural
| disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, and to deliberate
| destruction in war.
|
| Like, it's a tunnel underground; it sure seems like an earthquake
| might misalign or fill it so that it becomes unusable. Or in
| wartime I'd dump sewage down one of the shafts to ruin the water
| supply...what are the protections against this?
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| A lot of it might be hearsay or exaggerations.
| geraneum wrote:
| Obviously, compared to other means of transporting water at
| that time! For example an "open" river could have been more
| vulnerable in certain circumstances.
|
| Strong earthquakes may affect the path of the rivers as well.
|
| But I see your point in that, resistance to earthquakes or
| adversities are not what Qanat/Kariz were famous for (as far as
| we know).
| zeristor wrote:
| Aqueducts would be far more vulnerable.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Water pipes with 0 leeway for movement or elongation/shortening
| in the violently shaking ground or in the walls cracking seems
| less resilient, at least in some cases, than these 'mud'
| tunnels.
| ricksunny wrote:
| Tenerife also has 'galerias' that are dug horizontally into the
| mountain to obtain water. (They were dug much later thsn the
| qanats to my understanding)
|
| https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galer%C3%ADa_filtrante
| la64710 wrote:
| Looks like this has been posted multiple times in the past.. I
| wonder why. Is there a story here ?
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=qanat
| aetch wrote:
| Easy points
| ashalhashim wrote:
| "Cecil - No civilization in history has ever considered 'chief
| hydrological engineer' a calling."
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Some more discussion previously 7 years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11719441
| smsm42 wrote:
| Very useful word if you play Words with friends
| zeristor wrote:
| I'm guessing that the use of pump driven wells chasing the
| falling water table in the US means building these today isn't
| viable, which is a shame.
|
| Were the Persians smart enough to consider ground water recharge
| to feed the aquifers?
| robocat wrote:
| Good image showing the rows of excavation holes and tailings:
|
| https://www.ancientpages.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/qana...
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