Bam: post-quake revelations

Aerial photographs of the Iranian city of Bam, which was destroyed in an earthquake last year that killed more than 26,000 people, have revealed important new archaeological sites.

One discovery dates from between 2,400BC and 2,600 BC, proving the city is centuries older than experts had thought. Another site, from medieval times, showed that the community then practised religious and cultural tolerance but was threatened by marauding Turkic tribes and the Mongol invasion.

Perhaps the most striking news is that the fault that destroyed Bam also created it:

The history of the city rests on an astonishing network of qanats, huge underground irrigation channels, kilometres long. . .

Qanats tap water supplies deep below the feet of nearby mountains. They slope down at a slightly shallower angle than the slope of the hill, and surface kilometres away, often in areas that would otherwise be completely dry. In Bam, the qanats surfaced much closer to the water source because the fault line caused a sharp fall in the ground level. So agriculture developed along the line, eventually leading to the development of the city.

Dr [Chahryar] Adle [a senior archaeologist at Iran's CHTO and the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique] says the ancient irrigation system was a wonder of Persian engineering, imitated from Chinese Turkistan to Egypt and the Arabian peninsula.

Read more here.

Posted by David on June 19, 2004 5:49 PM