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Water Supply in Rome, the World’s First Metropolis

第一章

世界上第一个大都市罗马城的供水

If water is the essential ingredient of life, then water supply is the essential ingredient of civilization. In ancient times, when people first began gathering in settlements for trade and mutual protection, they tended to locate within ashort distance of their drinking water. But as settlements grew into villages and villages gave way to cities, people were forced to live farther away from their water source. Initially, the challenge of supplying areas of the city that were far from water was solved by digging a well or by paying for home delivery of water.¹ For the inhabitants of the first cities, obtaining water was just one more challenge that had to be overcome to reap the benefits of urbanliving.

如果说水是生命中不可缺少的一部分，那么供水就是人类文明史中必不可少的组成部分。在古代，人类为了贸易往来以及安全的需要，聚居在靠近饮用水的地方。但随着聚居地发展成小镇，小镇又发展为城市，人们被迫生活在远离水源的地方。起初，远离水源的城市生活区所面临的挑战是通过打井或付费送水到户来解决的^［１］。对于第一批城市居民来说，如何获取水只是享受便利城市生活所必须克服的挑战之一。

As time passed, cities experimented with ways to import water. For example, around 700 BCE, inhabitants of the city of Erbil, in northern Iraq, dug gently sloping horizontal tunnels known as qanats to route groundwater into the city from a distance of approximately twenty kilometers (twelve miles) away.² Aroundthe same time, the Greeks dug shallow canals to divert water into Troy and Athens from springs in the nearby hills.³

随着时间的推移，人们尝试了各种途径把水输送到城里。大约在公元前７００年，伊拉克北部城市埃尔比勒的居民，挖掘稍稍倾斜的水平隧道（也叫暗渠），将远在２０公里以外的地下水输送到城里^［２］。就在同一时期，希腊人挖掘较浅的沟渠，将附近山上的泉水送到特洛伊和雅典^［３］。

Densely packed groups of houses and the compressed soils that made upcity streets also required drainage systems to prevent flooding. Early civilizations in the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia developed elaborate systems of gutters and covered channels for directing any water that accumulated in thestreets into the nearest waterway. In many cities, the drainage systems included a way to collect drinking water: cisterns were built to capture clean water that ran off the roofs of buildings.⁴

密集的房屋群以及由压实的土壤组成的城市街道，需要排水系统的保护才不会被淹没。早期印度河流域和美索不达米亚文明创造了别具匠心的排水沟和有盖沟渠，将街道上的积水引入最近的水路。通常情况下，城市排水系统包括一条用来收集饮用水的通道：蓄水池就是用来收集从屋檐滴下的干净雨水^［４］。

(Last paragraph of Chapter 1)

By the time the expire fell, the system that the Romans had built in their hometown had been replicated throughout the empire, thereby spreading the concept of Water 1.0 to Europe and Asia Minor. The blueprints for building and operating aqueducts and sewers were retained in church libraries, and the promise of a reliable and convenient water system lived on among people who resided in former parts of the empire where the abandoned aqueducts remained. Even so, much of the knowledge that Roman engineers had acquired on subjects such as matching water resources to their ultimate users, surviving droughts by establishing priorities for water delivery among users, and separating waters to facilitate more efficient recycling was forgotten in the rush to build bigger and better water systems. Perhaps the rediscovery of some of these Roman approaches will help us design Water 4.0.

到罗马帝国崩溃时为止，罗马人在罗马城修建的水系统已经被复制到整个罗马帝国的领属地，水１．０的概念，就是这样传遍欧洲和西亚美尼亚。用于建造引水渠和下水道的设计图以及如何维修这些系统的说明，至今仍保存在教堂图书馆中。在保留着罗马帝国废弃引水渠的地方，建造可靠方便的水系统那个承诺依然没有被人遗忘。尽管如此，那些古罗马工程师已获取的大部分知识，包括把不同水质用于饮用水和非饮用水、干旱时期用水分配的方法，以及分离废物便于更高效回收的方法，都被现实中为建造更大更好的水系统这股激流所淹没。也许重新挖掘古罗马人的某些水处理方法，会有助于我们设计水４．０。

ps. I typed up the English myself, so errors are possible.

水４．０：饮用水的过去、现在与未来

［美］戴维·塞德拉克　著

徐向荣　等译    虞左俊　校

上海科学技术出版社

出版时间：2015.08

ISBN：978-7-5478-2729-1

定价：38元

Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World's Most Vital Resource

Paperback：March 31, 2015

by David Sedlak (Author)