The shadow was an irrigation tool which began to appear around 2200 B.C. in various civilizations of the time. The tool is most often associated with ancient Egypt due to the famous Egyptian painting depicting the use of such a device as seen below. However, these devices were used everywhere from the Minoan Civilization to the Mesopotamians and Chinese civilizations of the 2nd millennial B.C.
These devices were well designed for making the lifting of water through means of human power very efficient. By creating a fulcrum and lever apparatus with a bucket like structure on one end and a counterweight on the other, humans of the time could lift water, often in the hundreds of pounds worth, several feet in the air with very little effort. This would often be used to retrieve water from the steep bank of a river, but could also be used to feed irrigation systems from canals.
This machine was so effective yet so simple that it can still be seen in countless places around the world. This machine displays an early understanding in very basic principles of our modern engineering ideology. Through the use of simple machines, basic physics and readily available materials, ancient engineers were able to produce a cheap and effective method for solving a simple, yet necessary problem of providing a civilization with water.
However, water being the important issue that it is, there were far more technologies developed for the capture, control and transportation of water in the early history of human civilizations. Feel free to join my email list so that you can be notified when I post new content! I will be exploring more complex and elaborate ancient hydraulic machinery in future posts so be sure to not miss them!
Engineering the Past 