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Beautiful. It’s fascinating to see how a people turned a region that seems so inhospitable (to a European) in to a very liveable place.

Windcatchers [0] and “Freezers” [1] are beautiful examples of that. Persian desert towns are a special place. And much of their ancient irrigation still stands today.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhchāl

Check out the pentapolis of Mzab in Algeria.

While beautiful, it is growing. The IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) was given control of doing large infrastructure projects and they have built some 600 dams since 1979. This is causing an ecological disaster.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/0...

I hope I live to see most dams destroyed as we'll have other power sources and desalination.

A Persian friend told me about the historical use of underground tunnels to transport water from the mountains for irrigation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat

Mind you this system of irrigation and water systems predates the romans! This was an insane engineering and creative solution to a necessity.

The Persian Desert (2015)