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Qanat

eganist
27 replies
22h56m

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.

jagaerglad
17 replies
17h47m

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 "Español" 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

zeristor
3 replies
8h42m

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
2 replies
4h44m

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
1 replies
2h55m

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
0 replies
2h53m

Someone in Ireland may reasonably also have a problem with “British Isles”, but that’s harder to fix.

animal_spirits
3 replies
17h39m

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
0 replies
15h28m

Funnily enough it's called Spanish because it's from Spain.

dragonwriter
0 replies
13h23m

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
0 replies
11h50m

Yes, because they speak Spanish. But you call it Spanish, not "Español". That's the point.

There are perfectly fine English words for what the Spanish call "Español" ("Spanish"), and what the Germans call "Deutsch" ("German"), and what the Indonesians call "Bahasa Indonesia" ("Indonesian"), and what the French call "Français" ("French"), and what the Chinese call "普通话" ("Mandarin"), and what the Persians call "Farsi" ("Persian").

paledot
2 replies
13h30m

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
1 replies
7h16m

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
0 replies
5h45m

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?

crazygringo
2 replies
17h17m

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 thatthe 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 Encyclopædia 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
1 replies
9h6m

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
0 replies
2h29m

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)

yen223
0 replies
17h27m

I've only ever known the language as being called "Farsi". I don't think I've ever heard the language being called "Persian".

eganist
0 replies
17h39m

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 Ithinka 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.

Penyngton
0 replies
8h40m

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...

pvg
5 replies
22h37m

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_
2 replies
15h48m

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
1 replies
15h8m

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
0 replies
13h23m

New Orleans. Outside it's four syllable. Inside it's one

aixhole
1 replies
12h37m

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
0 replies
9h18m

They might be but that link doesn't seem to say that.

userbinator
0 replies
10h19m

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.

parentheses
0 replies
15h2m

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.

jahnu
0 replies
22h35m

I visited several of these things in Yazd. Super fascinating technology (and the city in general too).

brabel
12 replies
22h2m

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
10 replies
20h32m

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
2 replies
20h21m

"Ice is nice" is severely understating the importance of refrigeration. The ability to preserve fresh foods is easily up there with penicilin.

trevyn
1 replies
8h8m

There are a lot of ways to preserve food without refrigeration.

simbolit
0 replies
5h34m

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
1 replies
20h9m

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
0 replies
19h53m

I don't deny that, my claim is more of "what counts as 'primitive conditions'?"

geraneum
1 replies
16h25m

“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
0 replies
8h22m

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...

pazimzadeh
0 replies
19h42m

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 Tocoshhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocosh

jcranmer
0 replies
18h41m

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 >10× 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.

KineticLensman
0 replies
19h3m

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.

vacuity
0 replies
20h19m

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.

saagarjha
4 replies
17h36m

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?

geraneum
1 replies
16h42m

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
0 replies
8h37m

Aqueducts would be far more vulnerable.

saiya-jin
0 replies
6h33m

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.

MichaelZuo
0 replies
17h9m

A lot of it might be hearsay or exaggerations.

inductive_magic
4 replies
22h55m

Wonderful video which is somewhat related:https://youtu.be/twAP3buj9Og?si=muhCC08RsFzofObB

pciexpgpu
1 replies
21h49m

This entire thread is fantastic and a great learning opportunity. Sent me spiraling through Wikipedia pages. This video is really great too!

adriand
0 replies
14h0m

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.

guwop
0 replies
22h7m

amazing vid!

archon1410
0 replies
22h30m

It seems the video is making rounds yet again—it was also recommended to me by the algorithm a few days ago.

miohtama
3 replies
20h41m

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
2 replies
12h33m

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
1 replies
6h3m

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
0 replies
3h39m

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.)

chis
3 replies
22h58m

Crucial scrabble word

hunter2_
1 replies
16h32m

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
0 replies
10h13m

That's not surprising, since Qanon (what came to mind when I saw this word) is pronounced with the leading CUE as well.

kristianp
0 replies
19h55m

I came by to say this. You'd want to know about "qi" and "qat" too of course.

startages
2 replies
19h22m

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
1 replies
16h55m

A little side note, the original name of Qanat in Persian is “Kariz”.

cmrdporcupine
0 replies
15h49m

Curious, seems to me that they all come from the same Akkadian (ancient Semitic language) root:

"From earlier form کاهریز‎ (/ kāhrēz /) or کهریز‎ (/ kahrēz /), from Middle Persian [Book Pahlavi needed] (ksryc / kahrēz /) (compare Manichaean Middle Persian 𐫞𐫍𐫡𐫏𐫉‎ (qhryz / kahrēz /, “qanat”), Parthian 𐫞𐫍𐫡𐫏𐫝‎ (qhryc / kahrēz /, “qanat”) and Khunsari کیریز‎ (/ kēirīz) /), or compound of کاه‎ (kâh, “straw”) +‎ ریز‎ (rêz, “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":

"Forcannālis, from canna (“reed, cane”), from Ancient Greek κάννα (kánna, “reed”).*

And the Greek in turn comes, apparently, from Akkadian (Semitic)"qanûm""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.

zabzonk
1 replies
21h59m

also mentioned in "Dune", the novel, along with other arabic/persian words.

globular-toast
0 replies
8h23m

I somehow managed to read most ofChildren of Dunewithout 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).

nagonago
1 replies
18h14m

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
0 replies
5h38m

I guess it is called "NAME OF THE CORPORATION square", but, well, isn't "corporation square" a great name for a mall!

la64710
1 replies
14h18m

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
0 replies
14h14m

Easy points

dalbasal
1 replies
19h22m

How sloped are water tables, typically?

simbolit
0 replies
5h39m

Rough answer: as sloped as the terrain on top.

Better answer: it depends.

Best answer: find your local equivalent ofhttps://www3.twdb.texas.gov/apps/WaterDataInteractive/Ground...

zeristor
0 replies
8h38m

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?

xeonmc
0 replies
22h28m

What a coincidence, recently saw it on Asianometry's video about the Iran water crisis.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaEhNTpvEN8

smsm42
0 replies
9h33m

Very useful word if you play Words with friends

robocat
0 replies
8h32m

Good image showing the rows of excavation holes and tailings:

https://www.ancientpages.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/qana...

ricksunny
0 replies
17h28m

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

extensis
0 replies
22h35m

Video from Asianometry about Iran's water problems, mentioning quanat:https://youtu.be/watch?v=aaEhNTpvEN8

dr_dshiv
0 replies
21h22m

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.

ashalhashim
0 replies
12h7m

“Cecil - No civilization in history has ever considered ‘chief hydrological engineer’ a calling.”

aidenn0
0 replies
18h43m

I first encountered this concept in a Sierra Adventure game:

https://youtu.be/rd-epKNOo0U?t=3049

SoapSeller
0 replies
18h57m

Also see Seville attempt to cool public spaces using modern variant:

https://cartujaqanat.com/

ChrisArchitect
0 replies
10h5m

Some more discussion previously 7 years ago:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11719441