A short history of water

ALAIN GODA W i n d

The substance o f life, water occurs throughout our planet in three forms (gas, liquid, solid) and a diversity of guises: as friend and foe of humankind, as a source o f power,' as apple of dis- cord, as common heritage and as a victim. A potted story o f water in a histori- cal context illustrates the diversity, and hence wealth, of the connections between people and water.

resource-use priorities in many parts of the world, the history of our understanding of the water cycle perhaps bears recalling. In effect only

in the late seventeenth century did European scientists begin to reach a clear understanding of the origin of water and its natural cycle. This cycle has three components: (a) the sea, and to a much smaller extent, vegetation (evaporation and evapotranspiration driven by solar energy); (b) the clouds (transfer, condensation, precipitation); and (c) continental surface water (spricg?, rivers, lakes) and groundwa- ter which, with the exception of fossil water, run into the sea after a certain period of rime.

The first book on scientific hydrol- ogy in the Westem world was De I'orig- ine des fontaines ('On the origin of springs'), written by Pierre Perrault and

Figure I. Early conceptions of the hydrological cycle. AS described by Garbrecht ( 1987)*, there are many indications that Thales of Milet (about 624-546 BC) and some early representatives of the Ionian school were the founders and supporters of the idea that water rises inside the Earth. The groundwater is taken up as by a sponge and at a higher level, it reappears on the surface in the form of springs and rivers ... The theory that all water comes from a sea below the Earth - and the other very similar perceptions that water continuously forms in the soil, as the atmospheric air penetrates the fissures of the Earth - survived for more than 2.000 years.

Figure 2. Recovering water from dew. Even during the first half of

the twentieth century, certain scientific groups still strived to catcn large quantities of dew on the top of the mountains in Russia and in France, using aerial wellsg. Pictured here, a large receptacle for recuperating dew at Trans-en-Provence in southern France (1930-1931). Photo: A. Gioda.

Funds Documentaire O R S ~ T O ~ ~ ~

'igure 3. Water as a gift of the gods.

published in 1674 in París by Pierre Le Petit'. Perrault drew up a water balance

- for a basin located in the upper section of the Seine river2. In 1687 the English- man Edmond Halley calculated the evaporation rate of the Mediterranean and then compared that figure with the contributions of the rivers flowing into the sea3. To measure the evapotranspi- ration of plants, the French mathemati- cian De la Hire built three lysimeters in 16884.

Outside Europe, however, the Chi- nese had understood the water cycle 500 years before the birth of Christ, and in India, Kautilya, a minister of the Maurya dynasty (321-185 BC), had rain measured in pails placed in front of rural stores. In terms of public services, the first flood-warning system, set up by the Chinese in 1574 on the Yellow River, used horseback riders who trav- elled faster than the water. Owing noth- ing to the West, the Koreans started tak-

ing regular, systematic rainfall mea- surements in 1441 and have continued doing so ever since5.

The principal mystery of the water cycle was why the sea level did not rise despite the continuous inflow from rivers. To solve this, it would have been necessary to estimate the large quantity of sea water evaporated by the heat of the sun. However, that was not possible since it was assumed that the seas cov- ered only a limited surface area in a flat and disc-shaped world. This notion, inherited from Ptolemy (90-168 AD), faded out in the West, especially under the influence of Copernicus (1473- 1543) and Galileo (1564-1642)6.

Egypt presented another paradox for the ancient world. The Nile flooded at the height of the dry season and those living along its banks did not know where the source of the river was. That discovery was only made in the late nineteenth century by Europeans. In

Reconstruction of the giant water mill of Barbegal (Roman Empire, fourth century AD, near the ancient port of Arles in southern France). The largest known industrial installation of Antiquity, the mill comprised sixteen vertical waterwheels. They were arranged in two parallel lines of eight, along a slope, connected to millstones for grinding wheat and flanked by three service stairways. The watermili probably produced enough flour to feed the 12,500 people estimated to have lived in Arles at the time. Source of drawing: after Hodge

(1990)'2.

ancient Egypt, the lower castes thought that the Nile was just a branch of the Mediterranean and believed that the sea water rose in the river, in much the same way as in a bay in Brittany. The educated classes, however, measured the floods with the first scales to be set in the bed of the river, the famous nilome ters.

Further questions arose from the observation that rivers continued to flow even after the rain had stopped. What was feeding the rivers? In con- trast to more plausible hypotheses, Aristotle (384-322 BC) developed the fanciful notion that river flow resulted in part from the condensation of vapour of groundwater, itself produced by the flux and desalinization of sea- water in the ground (Figures l and 2)7,s,g.

PARADISE: WATER AS FRIEND - A GIFT OF THE GODS

For thousands of years, water was considered to be a fixed element of the globe, like air. In a basically rural world, water had virtually no connection with commerce since water from springs, rivers and river branches, wells and cis- terns was available at little or no cost, depending on whether or not i t was supplied by slave labourlo.

Water was a gift from the gods. There was a general aversion to inter- fering with nature's cycle, the ancient Romans and urban-dwellers in particu- lar being no exceptionll. Mills turned day and night (Figure 3)12. The water supply goal was especially to provide water for cities: fountains and gigantic

I

hot baths. Special amphitheatres, known as naumachiae, were con- structed for water sports (Figure 4)13. The historian Pierre Grimal14 calls Rome the ‘city of water’ -by the end of the imperial epoch, eleven major aque- ducts were transporting water to ‘the city’15. Nevertheless, by around 144 BC, the inverted siphon technique had been mastered with the use of pipes made from lead, a metal in abundant supply in the area that later became Spain16. According to bibliographical sources, under the reign of Trajan (98- 117 AD) the daily amount of water sup- plied to each Roman was approxi- mately 1,000 li;resl7. This estimate does not, however,.allow for leaks and enormous water losses from the

ancient system. After the fall of Rome and then Constantinople, the Arabs and the Persians pursued and refined the tradition of fountains, water sports and hot baths. The fashion then reap- peared in Europe during the baroque period (Figure 5)l8. But it was not until the eighteenth and, even more so, the nineteenth century, with the rediscov- ery of the body and the health cult, that the popularity of spas reached its height”. Marienbad, Vichy, Baden- Baden, Spa, Bath and Montecatini flourished. In France, the Empress Eugénie set the style by going to spas. In the novel ‘Mont-Oriol’, written in 1887, Guy de Maupassant provided a realistic description of the opening of a rural spa.

Water was a gift from the gods like the fountain tree or holy

for the early inhabitants of the island of Hierro’O (Figure 6). The Incas believed that Lake Titicaca was the centre of the original world (Figure 7)21. In Aztec Mexico, the peasants worshipped Tláloc, the god of rain, symbolized by a frog or a toad. In fact, water was the essential factor in the stability and orga- nization of the pre-Columbian peoples of Mexicoz2. Around 1730 in the New World, Bartolomé Arzáns, chronicler of the life of Potosi, the largest city in the Americas of the seTienteenth centUr>: still considered rain a divine phenomenonz3.

PARADISE LOST: WATER AS A DANGER AND SOURCE OF CONFLICT

fi {TFq =-Water as foe: waterborne diseases

and natural disasters Nevertheless, humankind very soon

lost the key to paradise. Waterborne diseases of parasitic, bacterial or viral origin are widespread, propagated by

Fi

44 A short history of water ALAIN CIODA

\

Figure 6.

human beings as a result of poor hygiene or mismanagement of water. At the end of the nineteenth century, Louis Pasteur and his students denion- strated the role played by germs in infectious diseases and the consequent importance of good hygiene. Water- borne parasites are predominantly responsible for diseases in the develop- ing world. These include malaria (1 million deaths annually, 100 to 150 million new cases each year, 90% of which are in Africa, 300 million para- site carriers); bilharziasis (300 million people at risk); and filariasis. Among the bacterial disorders, cholera contin- ues to be the most notorious in Europe as a result of the 1854 epidemic which left nearly 150,000 dead in France (Figure 8)24. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, seven world pan- demics have killed hundreds of thou- sands. Among virus-caused diseases, hepatitis A, like cholera, is spread by dirty hands and contaminated water. To this group should be added severe par- asitic, bacterial and viral dysenteries in newborn babies.

Among the major rains and floods of history, eight years of massive rainfall and record flooding in the period 13 13- 1320 affected the whole of Europe and, in 1315-1316, produced one of the worst famines of the Middle Ages. In the Winchester area of England, the hay would not dry, harvests were pitifully

small, oxen became unshoed and eels propagated outside ponds. The price of grain was three times the average for the period 1270-135025. More people died only in the great plague of 1349. In addition to these natural disasters, improper land use aggravated flooding and triggered erosion, especially in arid

The fountain tree of the Canaries. The ancient shepherds venerated this tree until it was blown down by the wind in the seventeenth century. In an arid environment, the sacred tree received a large quantity of droplets of mist, producing a veritable fountain at its feet. One legend had it that a young shepherdess, enamoured of a Castillian soldier (the kingdom which conquered the Canary Islands in the fifteenth century), paid with her life for telling him the secret of the tree. See Cioda et al. ( 1995)20.

Figure 7. lake Titicaca, cradle of the Inca Empire (fifteenth to sixteenth centuries). Situated a t 3,800 m altitude and covering 8,300 km2. it was the most sacred site of the Incas: the origin of the universe was none other than Lake Titicaca. The Inca myth concerning the origin of the world alluded to the flood sent by the creator Viracocha, to punish early man for his sins and pride. After this gigantic flood, the first land area emerged on Lake Titicaca. From an island on the lake, the first Inca emperor Manco Capac left to found the capital Cuzco. After Wachtel ( 1990)2’.

Photo: A. Goda.

and semi-arid mountain regions. In France, anarchic land use and the per- manent occupation of large river beds, a frequent feature in the Mediterranean region, led to the Gui1 tragedy in June 1957 in the upper Durance, described by the hydrologist Maurice Pard@, and more recently those of Nimes, Vai- son-la-Romaine and the Maritime Alps.

~~

ater as power: ‘hydraulic civilizations’ Since ancient times the control of

water has symbolized power in the

Middle East, where water is in particu- larly short supply The historian Witt- foge1 referred to ‘hydraulic societies’, that is, civilizations based on the own- ership and control of irrigati~n’~. Well- known examples are the civilizations of Egypt, Assyria, Indus valley, Yellow River and the kingdom of Saba, which flourished in environments that then’ became just about as arid as they are at present. ‘Qanaats’ - artificial under- ground tunnels transporting water over great distances - were invented by the inhabitants of Urartu, in what is now

I

c Figure 8. Water as foe: contamination, disease and death. Representation of cholera as a skeleton pouring contaminated water into the Seine, drawn by Gilbert-Martin and published

at the end of the nineteenth century by the satirical Parisien newspaper Le Don $&hotte. It was the French scholar Moreau de Jonnes who (between 1828 and 1835) highlighted the relations between the displacement of cholera epidemics and the water of rivers and seas. He also introduced the idea of boiling or treating water to combat the disease. See Dodin ( 1992)24.

Turkey, in the eighth century BC2*. This

‘galerias’. Working from Old Testament evi-

dence, Dan Gill developed the theory that King David had been able to take Jerusalem by using the city’s under- ground conduits, which supplied water from the spring of G i h ~ n ~ ~ . However, the clearest example involving the power of water was the fall of the king- dom of Saba, symbolized by the destruction of the only dam in Ma’rib around 300 AD. According to the Ant sura in the Koran, it was owing to the impiety of its subjects that the kingdom disappeared because of water, just as it had prospered from it

To this day, Israel carefully monitors its water supply; it requires a powerful, interconnected network to meet its needs30. The Palestinian authorities are confronted with water shortages and consequent dependency on the state of Israel Jordan and Israel have con- cluded an agreement concerning their utilization of the waters of the Jordan

Other well-known contemporary cases involve rivers that cross interna- tional boundaries. countries located upstream can control the amount of water available to the countries lying further downstream. Egypt is depen-

dent on the political situation in Ethiopia, a veritable water tower of the Nile, whose future reservoirs and intake structures could make the Aswan dam and its irrigated farming obsolete.

pJq *“Water as economic

and legal challenge: the public and private domains Under Roman law, flowing water

was considered to be public property, which meant that rivers and their branches could not be commercialized. The political admili tary power of the feudal system was limited by rural com- munities for which water, by virtue of being continually renewed, was a pub- lic property and could not be appropri- ated by feudal right. By the 1566 Edit of Moulins, the royal authority in France decreed that all rivers and their tribu- taries carrying boats belonged to the crown; previously acquired individual rights, which included fishing and the use of mills and barges, were however still honored3 l.

According to modern French law, public waters consist of navigable lakes, dams constructed on territory within the public domain, navigation canals, their buildings and fixtures, and watercourses from the point of naviga- bility to the mouth, including non-nav- igable branches. The state may grant private parties personal water use rights or the right temporarily to occupy the public domain. It may also surrender

its fishing right. Non-public water- courses constitute a complex legal domain. Article 2 of the act of 8 April 1898, which was incorporated into the act of 3 January 1992, provides that riparians may use waters bordering or crossing their property solely within the limits determined by law. Under Article 106 of the Rural Code, no damming or work to establish a water intake system, water mill or factory may be undertaken on any such water- course without official authority.

Article 642 of the Civil Lode pro- vides that persons possessing a spring on their land may use the springwater at will within the limits and the needs of their property Furthermore, in practice the law grants landowners unlimited use of the water flowing from a spring on their property This property right also implies the right to conduct exca- vation work regardless of any repercus- sions d ~ w n s t r e a m ~ ~ .

Throughout history, water rights have been largely subsumed under property rights, making the amount or volume of water a relatively insignifi- cant issue. Moreover as a counter- weight to the conflicts between public and private rights, recent French legis- lation (the acts of 3 January 1992 and 2 February 1995) has reinforced the concept of a common heritage.

p@‘.T;? &*&kWâter as victim: forms of pollution

In the past, most pollution caused by human activity was chemical. Today organic and thermal pollution have become significant factors. Thermal pollution usually occurs downstream of nuclear power stations.

Heavy metals, widely used since antiquity, are the main chemical conta- minants. The first pesticide, which appeared in 1885, was the Bordeaux mixture, e.g. a copper-sulphate based liquid used to protect grapevines. HOW- ever, pesticides were not widely used until Muller discovered the properties of DDT in 1940. The abundance of nitrates in our waters is also a recent phenomenon due to intensified live- stock farming and excessive soil fertil- ization in the rich countries and a lack of proper latrines in Third World cities.

46 A short history of water A i n w Ginna

Figure 9.

Phosphorus has likewise recently impaired the quality of standing water through over-enrichment or deoxy- genation, with over-fertilization of the soil and the general practice of direct drainage ofhousehold waste. Advances in personal hygiene and the use of phosphate-based detergents have, para- doxically, produced a contaminant which also affects the seas, such as the Adriatic, causing spectacular and foul- smelling green tides.

The use of heavy metals is carefully monitored - the higher their concen- tration in the food chain, the more dan- gerous are the illnesses they cause. Lead poisoning was very common in ancient Rome when water pipes were made of lead; under current European norms, the lead content in water may not exceed 0.05 milligrams per litre. Mer- cury, with a maximum acceptable threshold of 0.001 milligrams per litre, can cause Minamata disease, named after the Japanese town where, since the Second World War, this affliction has ravaged people and cats eating con- taminated fish. Since the sixteenth cen- tury there has been continuous mer- cury contamination of the rivers and waters of upper Peru especially around the city of Potosí (Figures 9 and lo). The introduction of mercury in the sil- ver making process in 1572 brought great economic wealth to Potosí33. An isolated town 4,000 metres up in the Andes, Potosí had a population of more

Water as a victim: pollution of water by metals. Until the nineteenth century. mercury was an indispensable part of silver metallurgy. In Peru in the 1570s. the Spaniards introduced the procedure of amalgamation in silver metallurgy, with a view to exploiting less precious minerals. A liquid mixture was made up. comprised notably of water, mercury, chalk, salt, and mineral silver in powder form. Slow chemical reaction in the tanks produced the precious metal, after a single passage in the kiln at the end of the procedure. At this stage, the mercury was at last volatized. Shown here, a silver works at Potosí in colonial Peru (now Bolivia) in the eighteenth century. In these urban factories, the working conditions of the Indian workforce were appalling. The workers were in constant contact with the mercury. notably during the amalgamation. which could be accelerated by pressing and during the washing of minerals and sinks. Pollution downstream of the town was also extremely toxic. At Potosí, the amalgamation process remained practically unaltered to that illustrated by Arzáns34 until the 1870s.

Pollution of the waters at Potosi continues, with non-treated rejects from the exploitation of silver-zinc- lead-tin complexes and the presence of one of the world's largest reserves of non-ferrous metals, the triangular Cerro Rico or silver mountain (altitude 4.890 m. in background). Also visible (middle-centre) is the ruin of a mill of

the colonial period, driven by a large vertical waterwheel, and the grey-coloured canal reflecting the colour of the gangue and the large proportion of treated material (three quarters or 360.000 t yr.') that is spilled into the river. Photo: A. Cioda.

A short history of water ALAIN GIODA

than 150,000 in the period between 1610 and 1650, about the same as Paris at the time. In the early seventeenth century, dozens of mills and factories along the banks of the Vera Cruz canal ground silver ore and alloyed it with mercury34, 35. Today streams from the higher altitudes down to the Pilcomayo still lap against old and recent silver ore slag heaps, and mercury contamination has increased downstream of the gold deposits in rivers flowing towards Boli- vian, Peruvian and Brazilian Amazonia.

CONCLUSION:,PARADISE FOUND

Knowing what we do about the his- tory and crucial value of water, can we say that we are thrifty enough with it? Are we helping to preserve its quality? The answer, generally speaking, is no. Many of us take too many baths - one a day- which requires about 200 litres of water, while a quick shower uses only 20 litres. Although an examination of European history may reveal the source of mistakes made, it offers virtually no models or lessons for our contempo- raries or for us. Yet, if we started saving energy, for example, we would also be indirectly saving water since it is indis- pensable in hydroelectric, thermal and nuclear power stations. In the farming sector of many industrialized coun- tries, which has had record crops and is moving into the export market, there is need to turn attention to managing water resources and improving their quality. The world will be cleaner and water clearer when we dispense with the cult of whiteness and stop advertis- ing detergents, when we lower the dazzling light of our lamps and, inspired by the Japanese writer Tanizaki Junichiro, we learn to ‘praise the darkness’36. And in guise of a con- clusion, a clin d’oeil from ancient Greece: realizing that water flows, runs through our fingers and then hides itself, disappears and evaporates, Aristophanes, in his play ‘The Clouds’, reaches the logical conclusion that writing about the water cycle is the height of futility37Jx.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Perrault, P. 1674. De l’origine des jonfaincs. Carbonnel. PG. (ed.). édition 1996, CNFSH, AsniPres.

2. Sircoulon, J. 1990. Pierre Perrault, précurseur de l’hydrologie moderne. Eutope, 739-740: 40-7.

3.11Hbte. Y. 1990. Historique du concept du cycle de l’eau et des premiëres mesures hydrologiques en Europe. Hydrulogie conti- neiltale, 5(1): 13-27.

4. Addiscott. T.M.; Whitmore, A.P.; Powlson, D.S. 1992. Fanning, Feitilizers aiid thc Nilratc Problciii. CAB Intemational, Wallingford.

5.Météo France. 1991. Les donrites plu- viornétriques anciennes. Météo France et Mi- nistëre de l’Environnement, Paris.

6. llHbte (1990), see note 3 above. 7. M b t e (19901, see note 3 above. 8. Garbrecht, G. 1987. Hydraulic engineering,

hydrology and hydraulics in the Antiquity KID Bulletin, 36(1): 1-10,

9. Niltolaev, YS.; Beysens, D.; Gioda, A.; Mil- imouk, I.; Katiuschin, E.; Morel, J.P. 1996. Water recovery from dew. Jountal of Hydrol-

10. Margat,J. 1987. Les troisstades de l’économie de l’eau. IAHS Publ., 164: 47-51.

11. Tanner, R.G. 1987. Philosophical and cultural concepts underlying water supply in the antiquity. In: Rodda, J.C.; Matalas, N.C. (eds), Waterfor the Futuie: Hydrology i n Per- spective, pp. 27-35. IAHS Publ. No. 164. International Association ofHydrologica1 Sci- ences, Wallingford.

12. Hodge, T. 1990. A Roman factory. Scienf$c

13. Cerchiai, X. 1990. Rotita, ieri, oggi, doinani. Rome.

14. Grimal, P. 1990. Un urbanisme de l’eau à Rome. In: Le grand livre de l’eau, pp. 96-106. La Manufacture-CSt, Paris.

Oaf , 182: 19-35.

Alitericat1,11: 58-64.

15. Garbrecht (1987), see note 8 above. 16. Bonnin, J . 1984. L‘eau d a n s l’antiquité.

17. Tanner (1987), see note 11 above. 18. Gioda, A. 1990.La Piazza Navona et ses

fleuves. L‘eau, I’itidustrie, les nuisances, 142:

19. Maneglier, H. 1991. Histoirede l’eau. François Bourin, Pans.

20. Gioda, A.; Hernández, 2.; Gonzáles, E.; Espejo, R. 1995. Fountain trees in the Canary Islands: legend and reality Advances in Horfi- cultural Sciences, 9(3): 112-8.

21. Wachtel, N. 1990. Le retour des ancëtrcs. Gal- limard, Paris.

22. Raynal-Villasefior, I.A. 1987. The remarkable hydrological works of the Aztec civilization. In: Rodda, J.C.; Matalas, N.C. (eds), Waterfor the Future: Hydiology in Perspective, pp. 3-9. IAHS Publ. No. 164. International Associa- Lion of Hydrological Sciences, Wallingford.

23.Arzáns. B. 1705-1737. Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosi. Hanke, L.; Mendoza, G. (eds). edition 1965. Brown University. Provi- dence.

24. Dodin, A. 1992. Leau et le choléra. Secher- esc, 3(+): 251-9.

25. Le Roy Ladurie, E. 1983. L‘histoire du cliiiiaf depuis l’ari titif. Flammarion, Paris.

26. Pardé,M. 1958. Lacruedejuin 1957,Rcvuede Céogrcrpliic Alpiric, XLVI: 213-30.

27. Wittfogel. K.A. 1955. Developmental aspects of hydraulic societies. In: Steward, J.H.; Adams, R.M.; Collier, D. (eds), lrrigatioii Civ- ifizafions: A Cotitparalive Study. pp. 43-52. Pan American Union, Washington DC.

Eyrolles, Pans.

78-9.

28. Bistvas. A.K. 1970. History of Hydrofogy . North Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam.

29. Gill. D. 1991. Subterranean waterworks of biblical Jerusalem: adaptation o l a karst sys- tem. Sciciice. 254: 1467-71.

30. Yair. A.; Gvirtzman, H. 1995. Bilan d’eau d’ls- raël : situation présente et perspectives d’avenir. Sécheresse, 6(1): 59-65.

31. Le Moal, R. 1992. Les droits sur l’eau. ADE- MART$ Nantes.

32. Le Moa1 (1992). see note31 above. 33. Serrano, C.; Peláez. J. 1996. La Ribera de Vera

Cruz de Potosí. Rocasy Minerales, 24(5): 49- 67.

34. Arzáns (1705-1737). see note 23 above. 35. Gioda, A.; Serrano, C. 1998. tleau et l’argent à

Potosi (Ancien Haut-Ptrou puis Bolivie). La

36.Tanizaki Junichiro. 1933. Élo e de l’otnbre. French editions, 1977 and 199~Publications Orientalistes de France, Paris.

37. This study is dedicated to the memory of two European botanists who took a keen interest in the history ofscience and the flora of Latin America: Dr Marcel Kroenlein, director for many years of Monaco\ Jardin Exotique: and Pierre Fontanel, a young engineer From Mont- pellier specializing in weeds.

38. For their comments on earlier dralts of this article, I wish to thank in particular: in France, Gérard Grosclaude (INRA, Nantes), Sann LHÕte, Eugenio Rabbia (IRD, ex-ORSTOM, Montpellier), and also Pierre Morlon (INRA, Dijon), Charles Riou (INRA, Bordeaux), Pierre Chevallier (IRD, ex- ORSTOM, Montpellier), Alain Misset and Jean Mouchet (IRD, ex-ORSTOM, Paris); in Bolivia, René Arze (ABNB, Sucre), Bernard Pouyaud, María Cecilia González (IRD, ex- ORSTOM, La Paz), Carlos Serrano (UATF; Potosi); in Argentina, Rosario Prieto (CRICYT, Mendoza); in Uruguay, Carlos Fer- nández Jáuregui (UNESCO, Montevideo); in Spain, Andrés Acosta (ex-WMO, Salamanca); and in Israel, Jan Szeminski (University of Jerusalem).

HoIIille Blaltche, 7: 65-75.

’

Alain Giada is a hydrologist with the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD, previously ORSTOM) and the Bolivian National Senrice for Meteorology and Hydrol- ogy (SENAMHI). His research interests include the history of floods in the Italian Alps. and the search for water from mists in the Canary Islands and from dew in Ukraine. Other research themes include the history and partial restoration of Portuguese tidal mills of the Middle Agesand the hydraulicsof mining operations in colonial Peru. Since 1995, he has worked on the climate history of the Central Andes within the tropical glaciol- ogy programme of IRD, which is also spon- sored by UNESCO5 International Hydrologi- cal Programme through the UNESCO Olfice in Montivideo. and the ARCHISS (Archival Climate History Survey) project of WMO. UNESCO and ICA. His address is: IRD/SENAMHI, CP 2352. Cochabamba, Bolivia. E-mail: gioda@maconlinebbs.com.

48 A short history of water ALAIN CIODA