http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42157402
Interesting information you can use to justify placing a civilization or city in an area without a major river as a water supply...
Interesting
I'm not sure many times "magic" is not enough but it is good to know other options.
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(shrugs) If this one team's research is accurate -- because how often does snazzy research aimed at getting media attention turn out to be wrong? -- it'd still be the only example of so much as a region managing without one. (One example I use for such debates is this question: how many pre-Industrial Age cities in the United States were not founded on a navigable river or lake? Answer: Indianapolis, and the founders thought the White River was navigable.)
As far as the threadbare "But there's magic" argument goes, I've got the full scale rant right here (http://ravenswing59.blogspot.com/2013/09/magic-as-technology-take-ii.html), but the short version is this: if you've got a city of 10,000 people, they need five thousand gallons of fresh water daily for drinking, and about fifty thousand gallons of fresh water for cooking, cleaning and industrial uses. If your game system both permits an enchanting base numerous enough to do this (and that has to be in place before all those people live there), as well as the wizards who are battlemages, teachers, researchers, detectives, adventurers, court wizards, mages-for-hire and fussy old coots who just want to putter in their gardens and not be bothered instead of being full-time water supply enchanters, sure, whatever.
Other than that, might as well just stick with the handwavium.
Ravenswing, thank you for the numbers on water consumption. I was just wondering the other day about the Decanter of Endless Water magic item and how many would be needed to provide a significant municipal water supply. So it would seem to be about 5.5 gallons of water per person per day.
A Labyrinth Lord Decanter of Endless Water can achieve a geyser flow rate of 30 gallons per 10 second round. 6 rounds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day. So 30 gallons per round times 6 rounds per minute gives us 180 gallons per minute flow rate. There are 1440 minutes in a day. This yields 259200 gallons per day. At 5.5 gallons per person this yields 47127.27 people supplied with water per day from one decanter! That's a lot of water! Roughly 6 feet by two feet by two feet, every minute.
Now we get to why the world isn't flooded with clean water from these things. In my games magic items are special rare treasures. There may only be one or two Decanters of Endless Water in the whole world. They may very well be lost in some unknown ruin, not supplying a city. Wizards have better things to do with their time than sit around crafting these things all day.
In my D&D games I also assume that magic using characters are a small percentage of the population, and the numbers get smaller as you go up the ladder of levels. So only a handful of wizards in the whole world who might have the ability to create such an item for you. Those wizards will also have the ability to say "NO!" and make it stick. If the king shows up with an army, that's what Fireball is for.
But if you do have one your castle can out last any siege.
Quote from: Headless;1010260But if you do have one your castle can out last any siege.
Sure, provided you have a
Decanter of Endless Food as well. Or that the besiegers don't have any nifty magics that can do nasty things to castle walls.
That being said, there's another reason why towns are founded on rivers: transport. Commerce requires goods to come in and go out, and in pretty much any time before the 1930s, it's far faster and more efficient to do so by water. Even today, with all-weather highways and fleets of trucks, something like 90% of the world's trade by bulk is water-borne.
Quote from: Dumarest;1010150http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42157402
Interesting information you can use to justify placing a civilization or city in an area without a major river as a water supply...
City, perhaps. Civilization, no that doesn't seem to be what the article says (though it's not an area and civilization that I've read much at all about) since the Indus Valley or Harappan Civilization still had cities along the Indus River like say, Harrapa. There does seem to have been water from seasonal flooding for the cities in the area where scientists in the article did their new work. I don't think Mohenjo-Daro was on a river. I think it was already known that M-D was on a ridge in the midst of a flood plain so presumably there was a seasonal source of water for it too.
I like the idea of an ancient city that was flooded or washed away by the careless use of water magics like a decanter of endless water. You probably can't use just any old cork to stop up that decanter.
If magic (or gods) were real, then it wouldn't be rare. Why would I dig a 100 foot well if I could just pray to Culligania, Goddess of Drinking Water? Why would a city make reservoirs and aqueducts if they could commission a decanter of endless water?
And magic-users would likely be far more productive if they follow a Thomas Edison research model than a lone wacko inventor in the woods style.
Transport is a big reason, though the death (at least in the US) of river travel has played a big role in why St. Louis is dying. Also sanitation. It's easy to dump waste and such in rivers than anything else and because of said gods, fantasy societies should have some basic knowledge of hygiene.
Quote from: JeremyR;1010334If magic (or gods) were real, then it wouldn't be rare. Why would I dig a 100 foot well if I could just pray to Culligania, Goddess of Drinking Water? Why would a city make reservoirs and aqueducts if they could commission a decanter of endless water?
Well ... herewith another full rant on the subject (http://ravenswing59.blogspot.com/2013/09/ggf-3.html), but the TL;DR version runs down some bulletpoints:
* You assume there IS a "goddess of drinking water." I've yet to see one in any game setting;
* Speaking of game settings, in almost all of them, the cities look like any old pseudo-medieval fantasy city; the rural areas have farms and villages and things like any old pseudo-medieval fantasy fief. The shops depicted in these supplements don't have magical boxes where you insert a few gold and POP! WHIZ! a sword pops out; they have smithies where armorers pound them out on anvils. The farmers don't sit back and watch the priestess of the Earth Goddess
de jour witch up some crops; they are depicted as sowing, growing and reaping in a fashion a 12th century Burgundian villein would recognize. The fantasy cities aren't fed by hordes of clerics casting
Create Food or
Goodberry; they're depicted with bakeries and butchers and grocers and stalls in open markets, all operating in a nice low-tech mundane way. People drink from fountains and wells, not from Decanters of Endless Whatever. For the most part, despite people asserting that cities could have wizards providing for their every need, the writers, editors and creators of most D&D product lines don't act as if they really can.[/COLOR]
QuoteAnd magic-users would likely be far more productive if they follow a Thomas Edison research model than a lone wacko inventor in the woods style.
Possibly. But it seems they don't, and modern-day industrial models haven't yet reached FRPGs.
QuoteTransport is a big reason, though the death (at least in the US) of river travel has played a big role in why St. Louis is dying. Also sanitation. It's easy to dump waste and such in rivers than anything else and because of said gods, fantasy societies should have some basic knowledge of hygiene.
21st century Earth has more than a little basic knowledge of hygiene and causation, and between the millstones of overcrowding, politics, economics, corruption, sloth, NIMBYism and "apres moi, le deluge," that doesn't stop the annual burning of Indonesian and Brazilian forests, asshats calling renewable energy a "liberal plot," the Ganges from being an open sewer, and all manner of depredations worldwide. Presuming that FRPG deities are really giving "Do not pollute" lectures to their adherents (and that's something I haven't seen either in setting books), I doubt it'd work any better.
Glorantha (and I would assume a number of other settings) has numerous water deities at least some of which do have magics for providing water or for making existing water potable. Glorantha as a setting may be an outlier, but finding and getting water has been a thing at least since the predecessor board games White Bear, Red Moon and Nomad Gods (set in the arid region of Prax) which came out before Runequest and Cults of Prax were published. And I believe the God Learners in Second Age Glorantha did have factories that stamped out magic swords.
Sure ... but Glorantha IS an outlier for the importance it places on religion and the depth with which it develops it. Even so, there's a big difference between "priests of water gods have the ability to cast spells to purify/create water" and "there are enough of said priests casting such spells often enough (to the exclusion of all other pastoral, religious and social duties priests normally have) to provide the fresh water needs of a city."
I've yet to see a game system mechanically allowing it, or a published game setting beyond extreme outliers like Eberron or Spelljammer reflecting such ubiquitous magics. Again, if a GM wants to handwave it all and declare that just somehow, magically, large cities can flourish in the desert all the same, sure, whatever, but let's leave plausibility out of the equation.
Quote from: Bren;1010326City, perhaps. .
Cities you can definitely do. There are almost always exceptions to rules, and cities can survive on hidden sources of water (underground, seasonal, etc). I think the key is you can justify a city that isn't by a major river on a map (especially if the people in the setting have something like Aqueduct technology). Cisterns, water conduits, dams, wells, etc. Geographic features like Wadi. The Nabataeans were particularly good at this stuff (just look at a place like Petra). Also a lot of game maps assume there are features present that are not displayed (if you wanted a realistic map of river ways, the whole thing would be riddled with them and you probably wouldn't have a lot of room for the other stuff). So even if the game map doesn't show a major river, I usually assume, unless otherwise stated, there is some source of water (most likely a river or stream) that explains the population living there.
The issue of a city located far from a major surface water source, especially in a world with magic, isn't really drinking water. A number of machanisms, both mundane and magical, have been demonstrated in this thread by which a city can be supplied with its needs for potable water. The issue, as brought up by JeremyR is access to transportation and trade. That is the main reason so many real world settlements before the advent of the railroad and the motorcar were located on seacoast, lakeshores and riverbanks. Water is a very easy highway to conduct trade over.
There are ways around this, but in most cases people will just settle wear it is easier.
As for pseudo-medieval vs magi-tech settings, even the wizards of Harry Potter choose to live a primitive lifestyle. Just think how beneficial simple cell phones would have been in resolving many of the plot points in those books... Must be something about wizard magic that makes people luddites.
Quote from: DavetheLost;1010405The issue of a city located far from a major surface water source, especially in a world with magic, isn't really drinking water. A number of machanisms, both mundane and magical, have been demonstrated in this thread by which a city can be supplied with its needs for potable water. The issue, as brought up by JeremyR is access to transportation and trade. That is the main reason so many real world settlements before the advent of the railroad and the motorcar were located on seacoast, lakeshores and riverbanks. Water is a very easy highway to conduct trade over.
.
Sure, but you can still have cities that engage in overland trade and survive on the methods described. No one is denying that cities will generally be built where trade can be conducted by water. But exceptions exist, and overland trade was a real thing. Much of the Silk Road was overland for example (it was a mix of water routes as well, but there were cities on the overland routes). Most cities should probably be on obvious sources of water, but I don't think all have to be in a fantasy campaign.
Sure. Flying carpets would seem to me to be a great way to conduct trade. Fly above most of the hazards of land travel. Plenty of flight/levitation spells. Why not flying ships?
And caravans are a common adventure trope.
If your city has access to a trade route, and a way to have potable water and food, it can be anywhere. In a fantasy game all three of these are much easier to meet than in the real world.
Quote from: Ravenswing;1010392Sure ... but Glorantha IS an outlier for the importance it places on religion and the depth with which it develops it. Even so, there's a big difference between "priests of water gods have the ability to cast spells to purify/create water" and "there are enough of said priests casting such spells often enough (to the exclusion of all other pastoral, religious and social duties priests normally have) to provide the fresh water needs of a city."
In Glorantha if you needed a significant water source for a city you wouldn't rely on a horde of individual priests you'd heroquest to get a water source. Heroquesting (cheating at heroquesting really) is probably how the Godlearners would have addressed the issue to create/modify/co-opt a deity and create a source of water for their city...which probably would have dried up a river or caused a significant drought somewhere else when that area's deity was co-opted or stolen to act as the water source for the Godlearner city.
QuoteI've yet to see a game system mechanically allowing it, or a published game setting beyond extreme outliers like Eberron or Spelljammer reflecting such ubiquitous magics.
I'm not a proponent of argumentum ad fireballum as the solution to much of anything, but at the point you have decided to rule out Glorantha, Eberron,
and Spelljammer as outliers you are approaching defining the word "setting" so as to make your conclusion true by default, i.e. the only settings that count as non-outliers are the one's that support your conclusion.
Quote from: DavetheLost;1010249Now we get to why the world isn't flooded with clean water from these things.
Well, that is an interesting thought. If you do have a town supplied via magically summoned/created water, however it is used it is eventually going to go somewhere. Minus evaporation, most of those somewheres equate to 'roughly still in town.' If the town is at elevation, it becomes the effective headwaters to a new, magically-created river. If the town is in a valley or something, well... It'd be fun to have a town called "New Clearwater" next to a un-river-fed lake. When asked where "Clearwater" is, the locals point to the center of the lake and then head to the planning committee for the city of New New Clearwater.
Quote from: Bren;1010431I'm not a proponent of argumentum ad fireballum as the solution to much of anything, but at the point you have decided to rule out Glorantha, Eberron, and Spelljammer as outliers you are approaching defining the word "setting" so as to make your conclusion true by default, i.e. the only settings that count as non-outliers are the one's that support your conclusion.
I have to disagree here. Glorantha, Eberron, and Spelljammer
are outliers. Bronze Age Anthropological Studies, Doc Savage Fantasy, and Sailing Ships In Space! are all pretty idiosyncratic settings in their own right.
Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;1010439I have to disagree here. Glorantha, Eberron, and Spelljammer are outliers. Bronze Age Anthropological Studies, Doc Savage Fantasy, and Sailing Ships In Space! are all pretty idiosyncratic settings in their own right.
Idiosyncratic compared to what, exactly?
Quote from: Bren;1010466Idiosyncratic compared to what, exactly?
Most other generic fantasy settings. Note I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I think two of the three of those are great (Glorantha and Spelljammer.)
What Chris said. Eberron + Glorantha (and that's an arguably) + Spelljammer vs Lankhmar and Al-Qadim and Forgotten Worlds and Greyhawk and Thieves World and Majestic Wilderlands and Blackmoor and Harn and Dark Sun and Thieves Guild and Dragonlance and Rokugan and Golarion and ...
I'm pretty comfy with my assertion.
Over the years that I developed the Majestic Wilderlands, I woven in specific assumptions about the impact of magic, religion and technology on the setting.
1) Unless stated otherwise real world constraints hold sway. For example water transport is vastly more efficient than land transport.
2) The biggest barrier to the widespread impact of magical devices and spells is the lack of the philosophical base that out industrial revolution had. The Factory is as much a philosophy of work as it is a technology. And required several steps to get to the point where people could think of the idea.
3) The world of the Majestic Wilderlands is fundamentally an inefficient agricultural economy with hardly any surplus to support magic users sitting on their ass for the decade needed to start casting cantrips or first level spells. And for those who did do get that training, the people supporting expect a far more than being the city's water supply or sanitation department.
4) However magical devices and spells do effect the lives of the elite. To the point where their standard of living is close to what it was in the 18th or 19th century.
5) For everybody else magic does an impact, mostly because of healing clerics and clerics blessing crops, and my call on the matter is that life is about 20% better in the Majestic Wilderlands to a comparable cultures at the same time period in our history.
6) Religion is a bigger deal in the Majestic Wilderlands than our own history (which was a big deal as well). While outright theocracies are still rare, the ideas behind religion and the supernatural are pervasive. Then there is the cultural impact of the immortal elves. The makes most cultures in my setting far more technologically conservatives compared to our own history.
When the issue comes up, my assumption is that intellectual life of the Majestic Wilderlands is in the midst of it first great expansion akin what was going on in 5th century Greece. This is due to the ferment caused by the breakup of two major civilizations within the last 400 years.
6) Last but not least, unless it instantly turns the PCs into godlike beings even broken magic system can be used to justify a medieval setting. Because there is a lag between when people are capable of great magic to when they fully explore the implications of that power. A medieval campaign is set in a time between the discovery of magic and before the philosophers who figure out how just revolutionary it is.
It all about defining how shit works in your setting, figuring how it started, where you think it ends up, and finally figuring out where in time you want your campaign to begin.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1010401Cisterns, water conduits, dams, wells, etc. Geographic features like Wadi. The Nabataeans were particularly good at this stuff (just look at a place like Petra).
Yes, yes, yes! There are many cities in deserts and semi arid areas that are NOT on rivers, like Jerusalem. WTF are people talking about here? I don't understand why there is a question. Also, see atoll cities like Tarawa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Tarawa) or Majuro (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majuro) or Malé (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal%C3%A9). Or Venice, for crying out loud!
Quote from: estar;1010675Over the years that I developed the Majestic Wilderlands, I woven in specific assumptions about the impact of magic, religion and technology on the setting.
5) For everybody else magic does an impact, mostly because of healing clerics and clerics blessing crops, and my call on the matter is that life is about 20% better in the Majestic Wilderlands to a comparable cultures at the same time period in our history.
6) Religion is a bigger deal in the Majestic Wilderlands than our own history (which was a big deal as well). While outright theocracies are still rare, the ideas behind religion and the supernatural are pervasive. Then there is the cultural impact of the immortal elves. The makes most cultures in my setting far more technologically conservatives compared to our own history.
I think this is underexplored teritory in most RPGs, even RuneQuest Glorantha. How would demonstrably
real and
involved gods, magic, and supernatural forces impact the development of society. Spell casting wizards being just another example of this. (probably majorly tangential to this thread)
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1010401Cities you can definitely do. There are almost always exceptions to rules, and cities can survive on hidden sources of water (underground, seasonal, etc). I think the key is you can justify a city that isn't by a major river on a map (especially if the people in the setting have something like Aqueduct technology). Cisterns, water conduits, dams, wells, etc. Geographic features like Wadi. The Nabataeans were particularly good at this stuff (just look at a place like Petra).
Given those, you can also have technology that carries water to other areas, so underground wayer, or water far away can be used to support multiple cities, or even a civilisation.
I admit that I partially chickened out on this question in my current campaign. I'm doing one where magic has some fairly strong effects on the society--i.e. not standard medieval fantasy, but I kept to the cities on major rivers thing. Though in fairness, part of the reason is that I like having rivers around urban areas for the extra interest it provides when sneaking, chasing, and that sort of thing. Nothing like a bridge and a damp place to land when you fall off of one to liven things up.
Instead, the magical effects are geared towards improvements to existing processes. For example, most small towns on small rivers have aqueducts with astonishingly clean water in them, and this is due to a mix of the river goddess adherents, magic, and some magically-assisted technology. Large towns have even more elaborate infrastructure.
Quote from: flyingmice;1010679Yes, yes, yes! There are many cities in deserts and semi arid areas that are NOT on rivers, like Jerusalem. WTF are people talking about here? I don't understand why there is a question. Also, see atoll cities like Tarawa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Tarawa) or Majuro (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majuro) or Malé (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal%C3%A9). Or Venice, for crying out loud!
... you mean communities on seacoasts, communities in oases, communities with wells, communities with aqueducts, and
communities with 21st century technology, for crying out loud? Oh sure. I'm quite comfortable with 21st century Male having a six figure population, and anyone who thinks the burg would have as much as a fiftieth as many people as it has on medieval tech needs to lay off the wacky weed.
So sure, let's take Petra. Petra survived because of a very sophisticated system of dams, cisterns, reservoirs and aqueducts that were both a prerequisite to its existence and carried a honking lot of flood water, and the city didn't long survive the system's decimation in an earthquake. Now if you want to site a town in a desert, and there are economic reasons for it to exist as with Petra, and there's the peace, political will and technology to do so (because the Nabateans sure weren't going to pull it off if they had to fight off orc armies), sure, go for it.
But they are nonetheless extreme outliers.
Quote from: Ravenswing;1010731But they are nonetheless extreme outliers.
So just to make it clear, your point in this thread is that all cities in fantasy campaigns need to be right on the statistical mean? Outliers have no place in building a fantastical setting?
Quote from: Ravenswing;1010731... you mean communities on seacoasts, communities in oases, communities with wells, communities with aqueducts, and communities with 21st century technology, for crying out loud? Oh sure. I'm quite comfortable with 21st century Male having a six figure population, and anyone who thinks the burg would have as much as a fiftieth as many people as it has on medieval tech needs to lay off the wacky weed.
So sure, let's take Petra. Petra survived because of a very sophisticated system of dams, cisterns, reservoirs and aqueducts that were both a prerequisite to its existence and carried a honking lot of flood water, and the city didn't long survive the system's decimation in an earthquake. Now if you want to site a town in a desert, and there are economic reasons for it to exist as with Petra, and there's the peace, political will and technology to do so (because the Nabateans sure weren't going to pull it off if they had to fight off orc armies), sure, go for it.
But they are nonetheless extreme outliers.
So Petra is now too fantastical for a fantasy setting because of orcs? No one said Petra and places like it were there norm, and no one said these places had to have huge populations, but I don't see anything wrong with including historical examples, even if they are outliers, in fantasy settings. And once you get away from Medieval Europe and look at the rest of the world, you often find very different conditions and numbers. I think if the fantasy world you create is more boring than the real world, then something is off.
Quote from: Ravenswing;1010731... you mean communities on seacoasts, communities in oases, communities with wells, communities with aqueducts, and communities with 21st century technology, for crying out loud? Oh sure. I'm quite comfortable with 21st century Male having a six figure population, and anyone who thinks the burg would have as much as a fiftieth as many people as it has on medieval tech needs to lay off the wacky weed.
So sure, let's take Petra. Petra survived because of a very sophisticated system of dams, cisterns, reservoirs and aqueducts that were both a prerequisite to its existence and carried a honking lot of flood water, and the city didn't long survive the system's decimation in an earthquake. Now if you want to site a town in a desert, and there are economic reasons for it to exist as with Petra, and there's the peace, political will and technology to do so (because the Nabateans sure weren't going to pull it off if they had to fight off orc armies), sure, go for it.
But they are nonetheless extreme outliers.
The original post was about rivers. Not sea water, wells, or magic. It was not stated whether this was now or a some time in the past. All of my points are valid, as are the points in the OP. They are not outliers. If you are on a land trade route, you don't need rivers to make a civilization. THAT was the reason for the OP.
By the way, I don't give a fuck what you think, Ravenswing. I just wanted to clarify. Rant on.
Quote from: flyingmice;1010747By the way, I don't give a fuck what you think, Ravenswing. I just wanted to clarify. Rant on.
Well, aren't you a charmer.
Quote from: Ravenswing;1010628I'm pretty comfy with my assertion.
Seem more that you are pretty comfy with your rant and don't wish to confuse it with the many exceptions.
Quote from: Ravenswing;1010822Well, aren't you a charmer.
Actually, I'm a really nice guy. If you piss me off, you are either being a complete dick or a loudmouth moron. You can choose which you are being.
Quote from: flyingmice;1011012Actually, I'm a really nice guy. If you piss me off, you are either being a complete dick or a loudmouth moron. You can choose which you are being.
Whilst I have no sides in this particular argument, I must say I like thus comment.
No offense meant to Ravenswing, of course.
Quote from: flyingmice;1011012Actually, I'm a really nice guy. If you piss me off, you are either being a complete dick or a loudmouth moron. You can choose which you are being.
Whilst I have no sides in this particular argument, I must say I like this comment.
No offense meant to Ravenswing, of course.
Quote from: flyingmice;1010679Yes, yes, yes! There are many cities in deserts and semi arid areas that are NOT on rivers, like Jerusalem. WTF are people talking about here? I don't understand why there is a question. Also, see atoll cities like Tarawa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Tarawa) or Majuro (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majuro) or Malé (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal%C3%A9). Or Venice, for crying out loud!
Quote from: Ravenswing;1010731... you mean communities on seacoasts, communities in oases, communities with wells, communities with aqueducts, and communities with 21st century technology, for crying out loud? Oh sure. I'm quite comfortable with 21st century Male having a six figure population, and anyone who thinks the burg would have as much as a fiftieth as many people as it has on medieval tech needs to lay off the wacky weed.
...
But they are nonetheless extreme outliers.
Both of you seem to have jumped to agitated for unclear reasons. I agree that the initial point of not-by-a-river is so broad as to be meaningless since there's plenty of other sources of freshwater. When I first saw the original post, my mind immediately jumped to Crater Lake or other caldera lakes as potential freshwater sources not involving a river. In my public health education, I did run across a bunch of discussions regarding spring and cistern-based water supplies (including Jerusalem (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3137039), as FM mentions). Ravenswing is right that modern cities have a significantly easier time of it (or would, if we weren't trying to provide water for 10-100x as many people). And people are right to point out that the outliers of the real world are certainly not too fantastical for a fantasy world.
I think perhaps before jumping to getting angry, we should be trying to figure out what question, if any, we're actually asking.
Quote from: Willie the Duck;1011163Both of you seem to have jumped to agitated for unclear reasons. .
This isn't the first time this discussion has come up here.
Magic means you can have an entire city balanced on the peak of a mountain if you like.
But historically, any significant pre-industrial civilization needed a major river. If it was a sufficiently advanced civilization, the capital itself didn't need to be on a river. Jerusalem, for example, was not, but it made use of the River Jordan regardless, via Joppa.
And yes, a very clever engineering culture could have a single city-state in the middle of nowhere through things like cisterns and aqueducts, but as has already been pointed out, in pre-industrial times these were always extremely precarious and prone to sudden collapse.