The Most Perfect Ecosystem: The Qanat Karez Salt Leaching Oasis of The Ancient Silk Road, As the Model of Aquaculture and Chemical Engineering to Transform Our Present-Day Agriculture and Climate Temperature
Journal Title: Open Access Journal of Environmental and Soil Sciences - Year 2018, Vol 1, Issue 3
Abstract
More than 150,000 Gallerias, Qanat Karez sweet water systems, including more than 200,000 kilo meters of tunnels still exist in the Middle East, Central Asia and Mediterranean basins. Since the Islamic agricultural revolution which took control of these water sources, they are operated inefficiently losing uncontrolled quantities of water. The original ancient design was to direct water to arid zone of sabkha basins in order to leach salt deposits by leaching, (you have used leaching twice) recrystallizing and precipitating the salts as pure thick strata S of salt crust. The tunnels are used today only for domestic and local agricultural water supply. The engineering and construction of these systems involved extremely heavy investment, in difficult desert conditions. The human cost of building the tunnels and boreholes could only have been justified by the value of the salt production resulting from the irrigation and flooding mechanisms. This forgotten technology is no longer in use and the misunderstanding has caused misuse and inefficiency Many communities still rely on the ancient Qanat. Modern no-tilling arable field cultivation has many advantages. IT IS efficient, saves water, and energy, and results in a better use of nutrient fertilizers. Ploughing and furrowing topsoil today, is considered to be soil destructive. Opening the soil to bacteria and fungus requires insect acids and fertilizers which is also problematic. Most of the available water, for agriculture fields estimated to be at 90% of spate irrigation, is lost to evaporation. So how and why was it ever Invented?. The answer perhaps, is that this familiar global tilling, ploughing, technology used today by farmers, invented by Islam, was actually developed in ancient Persia for a completely different purpose: the leaching of pure salt crust from saline Sabkha wetland alluvial soil, produced the basic commodity, common salt. The salt leaching fields of the ancient Qanats, were inadvertently adopted in the 9th century AD to serve a growing population which Islam’s Jafari people reorganized. The thriving Silk Road salt supply route began experiencing competition from the renaissance of the cheaper natural coastal Sabkha lagoons. Meers and fens which were slowly exposed by lower eustatic sea levels and the Qanat Karez salt leaching lost their importance.
Authors and Affiliations
David Bloch
Keywords
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- EP ID EP570133
- DOI 10.32474/OAJESS.2018.01.000115
- Views 91
- Downloads 0
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