Kyarizes - the lost water technologies of the ancients

Qanats are engineering masterpieces of ancient Central Asia and Kazakhstan.

They were complex underground irrigation systems embodying advanced knowledge in hydrology and geology. These were ingenious engineering inventions that delivered water to arid regions through underground channels. The source — a mother well — was located in the foothills, and its depth reached up to forty meters. From the source ran an underground channel with numerous service wells (vertical shafts).

Alas, today we are witnessing the loss of these invaluable structures and technologies. As in the case of the mother wells that once fed the ancient settlement of Sauran — one of the key cities of the Silk Road — there is now a farm and plowed fields.

Plowing these lands not only physically destroys the remnants of the qanats, losing the technologies, but also erases the connection between our heritage and the knowledge passed down from generation to generation.

And right now, such technologies — especially in the south — would be oh so useful to us.