The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World

by Charles C. Mann

Maintaining the network required scraping out the silt. “A standing army of slaves for this task was required to toil without ceasing on this endless removal of silt from the canals,” Lowdermilk explained. These were the Israelites of the Old Testament. Roman and then Byzantine invaders took over but continued to dredge the canals. Then came Arab nomads with their new religion of Islam. “Despising the tilling of the soil and hating trees, the nomads sought to live off herds and off the plunder of settled areas.” As the water infrastructure fell into disuse, levees eroded; floods washed away topsoil. The canals dried up and left salt in the soils that glittered at night. Goats ate what was left. Nobody tried to restore the land—inactivity Lowdermilk attributed to “Moslem fanaticism, with its fatalistic belief that what happens is the ‘will of Allah.’ ”