In short, the WikiPedia article about yakhchals is much more satisfying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l
https://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/architect-uses...
But, of course people back then weren't any less intelligent, they simply didn't have as much knowledge, probably due to the inefficiency of transmitting knowledge from one generation to another without the use of digital technologies.
If anyone is at all interested in ancient (or even just modestly old) cooling techniques, 99 Percent Invisible had a particularly great episode in "Thermal Delight"
Digital technologies haven’t transmitted information between very many generations at all. I don’t think this was the problem.
They were doing just fine with papyrus(paper), leather(letters), tablets, and bark
It was a cultural revolution, in half a century the price of books dropped by an order or two of magnitude. They were transformed from a luxury item only the wealthiest could afford to something any middle class, literate citizen could own.
From "Moveable type" wikipedia:
"Seals and stamps may have been precursors to movable type. The uneven spacing of the impressions on brick stamps found in the Mesopotamian cities of Uruk and Larsa, dating from the 2nd millennium BC, has been conjectured by some archaeologists as evidence that the stamps were made using movable type."
Just to provide some perspective
https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2014/10/print-selected-text-page...
> They were doing just fine with ...
Writing books by hand, letter by letter? Not really.
I sometimes wonder what the romans could have achieved if they had a printing press.
There's a vast selection of old architectural techniques for controlling environment that we've thrown away, preferring to bolt an AC unit to a hugely inefficient building instead. Many are free, relying on natural convection and material properties etc, others rely on movement of water like the Yakchal.
Some, but far from all, are coming back to be seen in things like passive houses, but that remains an extremely small niche.
Permaculture attempts to learn as much forgotten technology as possible and re-apply it in a modern context for agriculture - the Earthship movement, same but for architecture.
I think the biggest barrier to these forgotten technologies is the stigma around the cultures they attract, as well as the hubris around the technologies they supplant. Its very difficult to get someone who has grown up with the Monsanto mindset to consider Permaculture concepts as a viable means of agricultural production - likewise with Earthship.
Stigma and Hubris seem to be the number one causes of lost technology, imho.
It's not very "modern" either is it? Hmm. I wonder if that's why we got the post-war modernism school of architecture. :)
Someone used to monoculture and pesticides presumes dishonesty when hearing about the productivity of permaculture - or even traditional mixed farming as it's comparing mono yields against dozens of crops and livestock at the same time from the acre.
It's a disappointment realising, after visiting a selection of old buildings, just how much nicer the old solutions are for humans to inhabit. You get none of the harsh drying that you do with heating and AC, but you do get small temperature variations and air movement that make it far better.
I haven't come across Earthship before, surprisingly, so thanks for that.
I once seen somewhere that Wrocław was designed to have air flow through the streets freely to take out coal hearing induced smog.
Now, after the war, Polish architects unaware of that redesigned some of these airways and even though coal burning is almost non-existent smog levels are rising.
Cars and loss of greenery contribute to it but one can only wonder how good air would have been if they would follow the original plan.
"HOW COULD THEY POSSIBLY HAVE MOVED THIS!?!?!"
Many paragraphs or commercials later:
"Ok they just put it on top of some logs and rolled it..."
Being originally from a hot, HUMID climate, I find these articles so exasperating. It can get to 85 degrees at night where I was born. So thanks, thanks for the mystic knowledge of the ancients, but it's central and a fridgedair for me.
Half the articles are trying to stop people from using cooling compressors, and discuss the limitations in passing.
In the end as long as there is enough of a breeze conditions can be kept "moderately comfortable" without AC for most of the year in our location. Though, it does really ask for there to be a nap in the middle of the day.
I feel great jealousy for all the creative solutions that can be used in dry climates, including convective and evaporative!
The first time I went to the desert I was amazed at how much you can change the climate without a hermetically enclosed environment. Fans work! Shade works! Blowing air over water works! Ice wrapped in a towel works!
You can make 115 feel tolerable with very little electricity or effort. THAT'S CHEATING!
I solved it by moving away.
Section 1-3
Evaporative cooling is a very powerful technique, but does not work quite well at small scales.