they have determined access. These questions are, of course, interrelated. How we think of water, whether as a sacred gift or a good for sale, both influences and is influenced by how we manage access to drinking water.
On July 28, 2010, for example, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution proclaiming a human right to “safe and clean drinking water.” Maude Barlow, a famed international campaigner on this issue, declared that “when the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights was written, no one could foresee a day when water would be a contested area. But in 2010, it is not an exaggeration to say that the lack of access to clean water is the greatest human rights violation in the world.” And making this struggle harder, she argued, has been the commodification of water: “Instead of allowing this vital resource to become a commodity sold to the highest bidder, we believe that access to clean water for basic needs is a fundamental human right.” The public interest group Food & Water Watch describes the conflict more starkly: “Around the world, multinational corporations are seizing control of public water resources and prioritizing profits for their stockholders and executives over the needs of the communities they serve.” Should water be a basic right or a marketable good?
As we shall see later in this book, this conflict is right now playing out in stark and often violent encounters in water privatization debates around the world. While much ink and, unfortunately, blood, has been shed over this debate, it has been remarkably lacking in any sense of history or what we have learned over time. After all, it’s not as if access to water is somehow a new issue or concern.
An age-old concern, the story of how societies have managed the complex resource of drinking water goes back well over five thousand years. Through a voyage across ancient cultures in the Middle East, Europe, Australia, and Asia, we will find that a society’s management of something as seemingly simple as drinking water is actually no simple matter.
G IVEN THE CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF DRINKING WATER TO SURVIVAL , it should come as no surprise that human settlements have always depended on ready access to sources of drinking water. As societies developed from hunter-gatherer economies to more advanced grazing and agriculture, the need for secure, abundant supplies of water became even more important. Archaeological excavations have found that settlements since the Neolithic time go hand in hand with water engineering. As settled populations grew, access to and control over water sources needed to grow at the same time. Cisterns and wells carved from rock have been found in excavations at Ebla, in Syria, dating from 2350 BC. Even earlier water storage sites have been found in northeastern Jordan, dating from the fourth millennium BC. Though half a world away, water storage basins with storage capacities of 10,000 to 25,000 gallons of water have been excavated in the Mesa Verde region of the American Southwest, and large collection and storage structures have been uncovered throughout the Maya lowlands.
The Minoan civilization in Crete had flushing toilets and domestic water as early as 1700 BC, while tunnels directing water from reservoirs and plumbing have been identified at ancient sites in Iran, Palestine, and Greece. Perhaps the most impressive ancient water engineering in the Americas was constructed at Machu Picchu by the Incas, who faced the challenge of moving water from a distant spring to their capital, located at an elevation of more than seven thousand feet. Sloping canals delivered water through agricultural terraces to the emperor’s residence and then, through a series of sixteen fountains, down the mountain slope to the city’s residents.
The Old Testament is filled with references to springs and wells, their importance clearly evident from the fact that each was given a special name. A desert