Asia's ancient canals

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Vietnamese "Venice"

On the territory of Vietnam, in the area where the Mekong River flows into the South China Sea, there are huge spaces with a large system of canals.

To estimate their scale, you can copy, for example, these coordinates 10 ° 5 '49.03 "N 105 ° 25' 53.34" E into the Google Earth program or go link

In some areas, these channels converge, forming, as it were, city centers. Only in cities are these streets - roads, but here, water communication.

Their purpose is obvious. Vietnam is an agricultural country (52% of workers in this industry, 21% of GDP) - rice, coffee, rubber plants, cotton, tea. All these fields are for growing rice. And these canals are an excellent irrigation system, and in the rainy season, a drainage system for excess water.

Narrow but often paved roads are laid along the large canals:

Simple dwellings of Vietnamese peasants were built close to each other along the banks:

Without nearby canals (water flow), the fields would look like this picture:

Ideal conditions for rice, but water level regulation (after rains) is necessary.

If you estimate the amount of excavation work throughout this area, then it will turn out to be fantastic. The channels, though not deep, are still. Of course, we can say that more than 45 million Vietnamese are involved in agriculture all year round (out of the official 90 million inhabitants of the country) and over many decades, if not centuries, such a system was dug to irrigate fields and drain excess water during the rainy season. … But I have not even found a mention of it anywhere. When was it done? Maybe someone from the readers can help with this?

Is it possible that this is an older canal system and that the Vietnamese only began to use and expand it? Or maybe you dug it yourself quite recently? They do not sit in offices and the Internet, but work with their pens every day. But I also did not find a single photograph of this process of such a construction.

One more point - the banks of the canals do not rise too high above the "mirror" of the fields. You can even say that they have the same height. Then where did the soil go?

Many canals are fairly straight lines for ten kilometers or more. There are straight canals with a length of 57 km. How could they have been dug in the past so straight without surveying equipment? Or were there ways?

What's more interesting is that in some places the canals share a common system of "tributaries" from the Cambodian side:

The state border runs along the canal.

The only difference is that on the Cambodian side, the population density is less (fewer buildings). But the channel density is the same.

The great channel of china

The article Vietnamese "Venice" was shown a huge network of water canals in Southeast Asia. According to some opinions, such a volume of earthwork does not fit into the existing picture of the capabilities of the country of Vietnam in the past, and, perhaps, even now. A clear answer "who built it?" not yet received.

Once again, it was a surprise to me that such a network of channels exists on an even larger territory, but only in China. And not only the network of irrigation canals for irrigation and drainage of excess water - for the fields. But huge in length, deep and wide are navigable canals.

There is a channel connecting the northern regions of the country with the southern ones, with a length of 1782 km, and with branches to Beijing, Hangzhou and Nantong - 2470 km. The width in the narrowest part in Shandong and Hebei provinces is 40 m, in the widest part in Shanghai - 350 m. The depth of the fairway is from 2 to 3 m. The channel is equipped with 21 locks.

Here is the official information about its appearance:

I tried to go through the channel in the Google Earth program, but, to be honest, I’ll say, I didn’t succeed to the full extent. The reason is that these areas of China are practically a solid settlement: fields, farms, cities, and industries. There are a huge number of rivers and other channels. And the very path connecting north and south is lost in this payin. We managed to trace a certain path from the south (30 ° 24 '16.53 "N 120 ° 32' 55.66" E):

You can follow this link and start moving north

The channel has such a loop. A thinner canal is visible, laid directly. Why it was necessary to bypass so - it is not clear

This place in the photo

In some places the canal is already overgrown (in the very south, in Hangzhou)

One of the many gateways

Crossing channels. Link

To the north, a huge network of such channels for the fields appears:

very similar to the channels in Vietnam. Their area is no less.

The length of the straight channel edges is impressive. This is about 11 km:

In some places the shores are "dressed" in a stone shirt

Surprisingly, despite the dense population of these territories, there are very few photos in the panoramio service. It is possible that this service is also banned in China, like Google. Chinese users cannot post photos in it.

Until Beijing itself, it was not possible to trace the path along the canal and rivers, but after watching it, it no longer seemed important. Because the fact of the amount of work done by China turned out to be important. Maybe, indeed, this was done over a millennium, or maybe they only adapted the existing system for shipping: they cleared the old one and dug the necessary new sections. The Great Wall of China seems to be a completely insignificant structure in comparison with this volume.

I would be glad for any help in finding information on this topic: photos, texts with mention, etc.

sibved

Materials on the topic from the author: Siberia. Irrigation canals of the Tagar culture

And what is not satisfied with the version that thousands of hardworking Chinese under the leadership of the same Mao Zedong dug the canals? You know there are enough people there. We dug the Volga-Don canal, Belomorkanal, etc. in Russia. and put the soil somewhere.

Yes, there are 50 km of channels. The rest of the reservoir. Small enough for comparison. But you can make a start in the calculations of the complexity.

On the Volga-Don, about a million people worked (office data). We have been working for 4 years. This is all with earth-moving equipment, about 8000 units.

This means that for the Chinese 2400 km, 48 million workers are needed, 384,000 units. technology. And for everything about all 192 years of shock work. Provided that a person can work actively for a maximum of 30 years. This means that about 300 million people must go through the construction site.

And if you still have no equipment, purely by hand? I even find it difficult to calculate how many people and years are needed for this.

And that in the history of China there is no mention of such a mega-grandiose construction site? They also love to brag about labor exploits. There is at least a line in history, maybe that would not be? It doesn't work that way.