Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Nasca water harvesting spirals!

My first link, <http://www.sciencealert.com/how-scientists-solved-an-ancient-peruvian-mystery-from-space> and it's actually a piece of physical Permaculture. Ancient stone spirals dug into the ground on the Nasca plain in Peru. They are very old, and impossible to date. Archaeologists had been unable to discover their purpose until now. Turns out they serve to use the wind to passively drive water out from the ground, in one of the driest places on earth. These devices follow Permaculture principles perfectly - Principle #2: catch and store energy, #3: obtain a yield, #5: use and value renewable resources and services, #6: produce no waste, #7, design from pattern to details, #11: use edges and value the marginal (think of the spiral as a great edge wound on itself). Many even still work today. Notice they are shaped into the spiral, one of the fundamental patterns found in nature.

It is hard to imagine this technology taking hold in today's society.

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