Imagine being able to inherit such an ancient system, curate and steward it into new productivity in your own lifetime, and pass it on intact and functional to your successors. What a great lineage of established infrastructure and appropriate technology. I wish we had such roots and connections, here on the East coast of the USA. Hopefully my generation will create such systems to pass on to the future. Thanks for the video tour of such an amazing site! Very inspiring.
@@plur_ndbn and how would you update a system you inherited? Would you limit yourself to Neolithic tools and clothing while you worked, for the sake of authenticity?
@@one_fieldwhy not? They clearly worked. I guess it depends on a few things. Firstly, what you mean by update? This is a working system that could exist for another thousand years or more by deploying the same methods. Updates would only really be required to adapt to changing climate. Thus, it's incumbent on those who care for the system to be careful when updating. Geoff shows a great example of modern fertiliser being implemented in the system, where high carbon materials are clearly available. Fertiliser, effectively stealing from the future by using limited resources in the Haber Bosch process, versus a self sustaining system of chopping and composting, in a self contained system with no recourse to the the global system and array of technologies and dependencies that then become locked in. Similarly, a form of automation could be introduced into the canal system via gates and baffles, but then you'd be relying on more expertise and a cycle of continuous software and hardware upgrades. In terms of clothing, there are many good reasons to continue to wear the items that have worked for centuries (before heavily commercialised fashions) in certain areas. I have clothes that will sit in landfill, slowly polluting the earth for the next 500 years for example. That's not to say that all technology is bad or anything like that, just that permaculture is about thinking through system changes and extrapolating their long term effects in total. Things like the modern cement being used to adapt parts of the system can be justified in that it'll likely last 100 years. Tools that use good quality tool steel blades might last for 2-300 years and so on. What we know is that modern farming systems are stealing topsoil from future generations in order to create surplus (and waste) today. Those systems are cheating, in effect, and do not work by any objective measures. It's incumbent on us to protect and perpetuate the types of system shown in the video so that we can have alternatives available to show as examples to those willing to listen and learn.
@@ricos1497 Lol because time, labor and skills also matter, and if what you have will on hand will keep the system working until a future date rather than allowing it to degrade from neglect and be abandoned (like most of these have been), then you're doing your successors a better service than if you insist on doing it "right" and never do it at all. Context matters. It's not an easy part of the world to live in right now.
@@one_field I don't disagree, I'm simply suggesting that it's important to weigh up technologies on their extended merit, with a view to longevity and sustainability. Something that hasn't been done in the last few hundred years in "normal" practice. When weighing up things like labour, it's best to view it against skills and knowledge that are lost by pursuing a technology (if that technology is complex and reliant on the global economy). In my experience, that doesn't happen as often as it should, with the new exciting technology being the winner in the short term. When you get that approach exponentially, you see what we have in the world now, which is an ecological disaster and resource plunder that is off the scale.
Welcome Mr. Lawton to my country 😊... Fun fact: some falaj water systems predates Islamic history and are still functioning with proper maintenance... The same systems are commonly found in most remote mountain villages through out Oman and UAE
Greetings from the LooseNatural farm in Andalusia Spain where we currently live through a drought and have prepared swales, waiting on the rain. Looks like a beautiful area you are in.
Have you had the opportunity to visit the village setup in Sorbas? Sunseed Desert Technology has been the primary tender since well before my time as garden manager in 1992. Well worth a visit and it's all accessible on public land.
It’s heartwarming to see this! I’m Kuwaiti/half Omanin 🇴🇲, and my grandfather god rest his soul, has a farm in Ibri. I have never been there, and no one is taking care of it My mom told me a story about this irrigation system and how she used to open it for the farm when she was a kid, and someone came from a neighbouring farm and got mad at her for opening it because it has turn and not our turn lil she knows since she was only visiting he figured knew she was the Kuwaiti living one and forgave her😂
It took decades to put all this into place. Oman in my mind is a very arid land, how completely different to see this. Possibility of adding compost and an understory planting to add value to the people and animals.
So awesome. I love videos like this Geoff. So inspiring. Obviously a healthy system with those frogs and fish swarming. Please post more videos. Thank you.
Hi I live un México, most of the people who like un tropical AND food tres áreas dont really realized how hard for other countries Is to grow Green,or food❤😢..but I do,bGod bless 2u guys
Hola.Por aquí en Canarias y más concretamente en Tenerife tenemos unas galerías subterráneas que canalizan ,por filtración,el agua .Son sistemas interesantes de ver .Saludos
Actually there is a small biosystem. Fish, eat algae, (wich grow from the organic matter in the water, cleaning the water), then release some of it back wich act as a fertiliser.
Has anyone taken the opportunity to set up micro hydro, ram pums or other low tech to stack water uses? In Sorbus, Spain, there is a ram pump to re-cycle excess water in the system.
Is there any measure of the productivity of this system? How does the system work? Who works there and who gets the food from it? How many people can it support? What about ownership and management decisions, how are they made? Such an amazing system. Is it as big as it could be, or is it stopped or getting smaller? Who has the knowledge and how it is passed down?
I was working at high slope place it's a challenge to make waterways to go down without using concrete in the runway. There will be lot of erosion even though we tried stone inside runway to control soil being washed out but the pathway needed cleaning now and then. Any suggestions will be helpful.
It's not fully watertight like concrete, but clay is good for lining canals or retention ponds and so on. If you are having a lot of erosion still, it suggests you could find opportunities to slow down the water movement. Maybe you can add some swales on contour. Andrew Millison has videos on planning water movement and management that might be helpful.
ITS A SPRING WATER FROM THE MOUNTAIN...PEOPLE AT THAT VILLAGE HAS BEEN DRINKING IT FOR 3000 YEARS WITHOUT ANY FILTRATION AND HAVING GREATER HEALTH THAN ANY MODERN HUMAN NOWAYS.
Thanks for the tour Geoff. What a feast for the eyes seeing this system in motion and the plants and critters thriving amongst it. I'm guessing these people don't have much trouble from obesity rates and vaccine mandates 😂
Would they also be using human waste for manure production despite some of the taboos relating to Islam about such practices? I remember that it took you a little while to convince your Jordanian colleagues to engage in this practice for the same reasons.
It's amazing what they have achieved with a relatively small spring. Just think what could be done with the Colorado river in the states. Yet they continue to complain of not enough water. More like not enough wisdom
This is such a beautiful, elegant, and extraordinary water system! I live in the northeastern part of the United States where water runs everywhere and evapotranspiration is low, so to see this level of meticulous concern and care of every little bit of water in this ancient system is just amazing. I love it!!! 💙🌊⛲🪴🌴🌳
It massive! I wish desert projects would become a modern obsession 🤗.
More like something usual.
@@MrGigi-dz9cv There are deserts on every continent, we need solutions to become MORE usual.
it seems to be increasing though.
Imagine being able to inherit such an ancient system, curate and steward it into new productivity in your own lifetime, and pass it on intact and functional to your successors. What a great lineage of established infrastructure and appropriate technology. I wish we had such roots and connections, here on the East coast of the USA. Hopefully my generation will create such systems to pass on to the future.
Thanks for the video tour of such an amazing site! Very inspiring.
ancient system with portland cement with ancient PP pipes, imagine
@@plur_ndbn and how would you update a system you inherited? Would you limit yourself to Neolithic tools and clothing while you worked, for the sake of authenticity?
@@one_fieldwhy not? They clearly worked. I guess it depends on a few things. Firstly, what you mean by update? This is a working system that could exist for another thousand years or more by deploying the same methods. Updates would only really be required to adapt to changing climate. Thus, it's incumbent on those who care for the system to be careful when updating. Geoff shows a great example of modern fertiliser being implemented in the system, where high carbon materials are clearly available. Fertiliser, effectively stealing from the future by using limited resources in the Haber Bosch process, versus a self sustaining system of chopping and composting, in a self contained system with no recourse to the the global system and array of technologies and dependencies that then become locked in. Similarly, a form of automation could be introduced into the canal system via gates and baffles, but then you'd be relying on more expertise and a cycle of continuous software and hardware upgrades. In terms of clothing, there are many good reasons to continue to wear the items that have worked for centuries (before heavily commercialised fashions) in certain areas. I have clothes that will sit in landfill, slowly polluting the earth for the next 500 years for example.
That's not to say that all technology is bad or anything like that, just that permaculture is about thinking through system changes and extrapolating their long term effects in total. Things like the modern cement being used to adapt parts of the system can be justified in that it'll likely last 100 years. Tools that use good quality tool steel blades might last for 2-300 years and so on.
What we know is that modern farming systems are stealing topsoil from future generations in order to create surplus (and waste) today. Those systems are cheating, in effect, and do not work by any objective measures. It's incumbent on us to protect and perpetuate the types of system shown in the video so that we can have alternatives available to show as examples to those willing to listen and learn.
@@ricos1497 Lol because time, labor and skills also matter, and if what you have will on hand will keep the system working until a future date rather than allowing it to degrade from neglect and be abandoned (like most of these have been), then you're doing your successors a better service than if you insist on doing it "right" and never do it at all. Context matters. It's not an easy part of the world to live in right now.
@@one_field I don't disagree, I'm simply suggesting that it's important to weigh up technologies on their extended merit, with a view to longevity and sustainability. Something that hasn't been done in the last few hundred years in "normal" practice. When weighing up things like labour, it's best to view it against skills and knowledge that are lost by pursuing a technology (if that technology is complex and reliant on the global economy). In my experience, that doesn't happen as often as it should, with the new exciting technology being the winner in the short term. When you get that approach exponentially, you see what we have in the world now, which is an ecological disaster and resource plunder that is off the scale.
Where it got noisy at that water stream I was amazed. Natural energized water!
Welcome Mr. Lawton to my country 😊...
Fun fact: some falaj water systems predates Islamic history and are still functioning with proper maintenance... The same systems are commonly found in most remote mountain villages through out Oman and UAE
Oman is an amazing place. It's so good to see people living traditionally...beautiful culture
The hanging gardens of Oman! Just beautiful!
yes very beautiful
Greetings from the LooseNatural farm in Andalusia Spain where we currently live through a drought and have prepared swales, waiting on the rain. Looks like a beautiful area you are in.
Have you had the opportunity to visit the village setup in Sorbas? Sunseed Desert Technology has been the primary tender since well before my time as garden manager in 1992. Well worth a visit and it's all accessible on public land.
@@az55544 Great suggestion. Thank you
It’s heartwarming to see this! I’m Kuwaiti/half Omanin 🇴🇲, and my grandfather god rest his soul, has a farm in Ibri. I have never been there, and no one is taking care of it
My mom told me a story about this irrigation system and how she used to open it for the farm when she was a kid, and someone came from a neighbouring farm and got mad at her for opening it because it has turn and not our turn lil she knows since she was only visiting he figured knew she was the Kuwaiti living one and forgave her😂
What a magical place in the middle of nowhere.
There's something so charming and beautiful about multistoried towns and villages built on slopes.
Namibia Africa is Full of places where this exact system would work perfectly.
Working on it as we speak. The food forest Namibia ❤❤
So amazing. Pkease consider taking a drone to film it would be great to get the Birds Eye view
It took decades to put all this into place. Oman in my mind is a very arid land, how completely different to see this.
Possibility of adding compost and an understory planting to add value to the people and animals.
This is awesome and smart work by our ancestors, and joyful to look at even on a screen.
So incredibly sophisticated. We can learn so much from these people...here in California we need this.
So awesome. I love videos like this Geoff. So inspiring. Obviously a healthy system with those frogs and fish swarming. Please post more videos. Thank you.
I love this series. Thank you for sharing it with us
Extraordinary. These ancient systems are wonderful.
What a Design, and Innovation! Even Geoff must be impressed.
Green lush garden in the desert are the closest thing to paradaise one can see. Tanks for sharing.
This is everything I live for right here
Amazing. Thank you for sharing this wonderful example.
Oman is truly a beautiful country. I had the opportunity to visit there in the late 1980s.
Hi I live un México, most of the people who like un tropical AND food tres áreas dont really realized how hard for other countries Is to grow Green,or food❤😢..but I do,bGod bless 2u guys
Very intersting
Thank you mr Lawton
Fascinating and Beautiful! 💚
This is so cool! The middle eastern countries showed these things instead of skyscrapers coming out of the desert, i would actually want to come here.
Such a contrast to the surrounding land.
it is so beautifull
I love to see stuff like this
Geoff, are you still in Oman? I'm living in Muscat and would love to attend any educational sessions you're running in town
Spot on Geoff. You're the man 🤍👍
Very Beautiful place to live..
wow, this is amazing! thanku
Hola.Por aquí en Canarias y más concretamente en Tenerife tenemos unas galerías subterráneas que canalizan ,por filtración,el agua .Son sistemas interesantes de ver .Saludos
Well done Geoff, keep them coming. Regards Alan
Thanks
Thanks for sharing ❤
Amazing ... what a beautiful place.
Wow, that is great
amazing!
Great 👍 😊
Sooooo amazing ...
Absolutely fascinating!
That is amazing!
Thanks so much for the video its so nice
Imagine, all the desert, transformed into a huge garden.
Actually there is a small biosystem.
Fish, eat algae, (wich grow from the organic matter in the water, cleaning the water), then release some of it back wich act as a fertiliser.
Aquaculture, should be taken into consideration.
Fascinating and inspiring! Thanks The channels look about a foot wide and two deep?
its wonderfull what we can do when we work in symbiosis with nature
Has anyone taken the opportunity to set up micro hydro, ram pums or other low tech to stack water uses?
In Sorbus, Spain, there is a ram pump to re-cycle excess water in the system.
Wow.
Fabulous!
Absolutely beautiful!!!
BRILLIANT.
Very cool!
Wow!!!
What type of concrete do you think they used for the channels? I’m curious how they keep it from cracking and leaking.
NORMAL ONE.
Beautiful
Is there any measure of the productivity of this system? How does the system work? Who works there and who gets the food from it? How many people can it support? What about ownership and management decisions, how are they made? Such an amazing system. Is it as big as it could be, or is it stopped or getting smaller? Who has the knowledge and how it is passed down?
Gorgeous.
It's amazing that with all the oil money in the middle east, they could easily scale up these systems to terraform the land.
I was working at high slope place it's a challenge to make waterways to go down without using concrete in the runway. There will be lot of erosion even though we tried stone inside runway to control soil being washed out but the pathway needed cleaning now and then.
Any suggestions will be helpful.
It's not fully watertight like concrete, but clay is good for lining canals or retention ponds and so on. If you are having a lot of erosion still, it suggests you could find opportunities to slow down the water movement. Maybe you can add some swales on contour. Andrew Millison has videos on planning water movement and management that might be helpful.
Is there a filter system to clean the water for drinking?
ITS A SPRING WATER FROM THE MOUNTAIN...PEOPLE AT THAT VILLAGE HAS BEEN DRINKING IT FOR 3000 YEARS WITHOUT ANY FILTRATION AND HAVING GREATER HEALTH THAN ANY MODERN HUMAN NOWAYS.
Great system using natural resources with zero energy inputs! I bet they don't worry about electricity prices...
What is wadi?
Free to walk around thanks to 22 SAS.
👍👍👍👍
Thanks for the tour Geoff. What a feast for the eyes seeing this system in motion and the plants and critters thriving amongst it. I'm guessing these people don't have much trouble from obesity rates and vaccine mandates 😂
❤❤❤❤
Gosh, when so much of what humans do is destructive to nature, how great is it when we do some rare good!
If they installed some microhydro they could generate a fair bit of electricity onsite too.
Vertical wind to pump it back up. Or run a air tank tool shop.
Would they also be using human waste for manure production despite some of the taboos relating to Islam about such practices? I remember that it took you a little while to convince your Jordanian colleagues to engage in this practice for the same reasons.
It's amazing what they have achieved with a relatively small spring. Just think what could be done with the Colorado river in the states. Yet they continue to complain of not enough water. More like not enough wisdom
5:17
no computers. no micro processers . no modern means of governing. no pumps . brill
Its Oman not Amman 😭
I need to see what’s in there!😂 if you don’t have the balls send someone else in with a camera 😜
Too much water
This is such a beautiful, elegant, and extraordinary water system! I live in the northeastern part of the United States where water runs everywhere and evapotranspiration is low, so to see this level of meticulous concern and care of every little bit of water in this ancient system is just amazing. I love it!!! 💙🌊⛲🪴🌴🌳
Just need part of worldwide degradable waste to fill desert and extend the green planet.
I believe one thousand years from now, that area will look far nicer and will be much more sustainable then Manhattan for example...
California would never let someone make the dessert bloom like this….🤌🏽
7:37
9:53