174 Early Agriculture
The need for reallocating the periodically flooded fields and determining the
dimension and bulk of hydraulic and other structures provide continual stimula-
tion for developments in geometry and arithmetic. Herodotus ascribes the begin-
nings of geometry in Egypt to the need for annually remeasuring the inundated
land.^30
No matter whether the earliest scientific steps in this direction were made in
the Nile Valley or in Mesopotamia, the basic correlation is eminently plausible.
Obviously the pioneers and masters of hydraulic civilization were singularly well
equipped to lay the foundations for two major and interrelated sciences: astron-
omy and mathematics.
As a rule, the operations of time keeping and scientific measuring and count-
ing were performed by official dignitaries or by priestly (or secular) specialists
attached to the hydraulic regime. Wrapped in a cloak of magic and astrology and
hedged with profound secrecy, these mathematical and astronomical operations
became the means both for improving hydraulic production and bulwarking the
superior power of the hydraulic leaders.
D. Further Construction Activities Customary in
Hydraulic Societies
The masters of the hydraulic state did not confine their activities to matters imme-
diately connected with agriculture. The methods of cooperation which were so
effective in the sphere of crop-raising were easily applied to a variety of other large
tasks.
Certain types of works are likely to precede others. Generally speaking, the
irrigation canal is older than the navigation canal; and hydraulic digging and dam-
ming occurred prior to the building of highways. But often derivative steps were
taken before the original activities had progressed far, and different regional condi-
tions favoured different evolutionary sequences. Thus the divergencies of interac-
tion and growth are great. They include many constructional activities above and
beyond the sphere of hydraulic agriculture.^31
- Nonagrarian hydraulic works
a. Aqueducts and reservoirs providing drinking water
A commonwealth able to transfer water for purposes of irrigation readily applies its
hydraulic know-how to the providing of drinking water. The need for such action
was slight in the greater part of Medieval Europe, where the annual precipitation
furnished sufficient ground water for the wells on which most towns depended for
their water supply.^32
Even in the hydraulic world, drinking water is not necessarily an issue. Wher-
ever rivers, streams or springs carry enough moisture to satisfy the drinking needs