The Ancient City That Mastered Water

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Primal Space
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Video Transcript:
It’s a cold rainy night in the walled city of  Cordoba, medieval Spain. Watchmen guard the city, unaware that an entire army of christian  soldiers are about to launch a surprise attack. In a single night, they conquer the  entire city, bringing the muslim rule to an end.
All over the land, muslim cities were  being conquered and taken over by the christians. But amidst all of this,  one city remained unconquered, Granada. Thanks to its strategic position  and the enormous Alhambra Palace, the city was protected, and it remained  untouched for another 200 years.
To this day, the Alhambra Palace still  stands as one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture ever made. But as you walk  through the luxurious courtyards and hallways, you start to notice something  even more special, the water. Winding its way through the palace is a  mind-blowing network of medieval pipes and channels that carry water to  vibrant gardens, thermal baths, and elegant fountains.
The engineering  required to pull this off was astonishing, and it gave the palace things like underfloor  heating, and fountains that could tell the time. This incredible system  also kept the palace cool and brought life to the surrounding nature for hundreds  of years, and it still works to this day. We modeled the entire thing, to  show you how it all worked and the lost mechanisms that once allowed the  water to defy gravity and travel uphill.
When the ruler of Granada commissioned the  palace, the engineers had one major problem. The hill was around 200 meters above Granada’s  main river, and getting water up to the palace would be a huge challenge. And so, they followed  the river 6 kilometers upstream to a point that was considerably higher than the palace. 
From here, they dammed the river and started redirecting it down a new channel known as  the Royal Canal. With meticulous planning, it navigated its way through the difficult  terrain, maintaining a very shallow slope, until it arrived just  outside the palace. It was a huge amount of work, - but this was only the beginning.
The designers of the palace had big ideas;  elegant fountains shooting out jets of water, bathing rooms with showers and underfloor  heating, and clocks that were powered by water. All of this required much higher  water pressure than the Royal Canal provided. And so, to get around this, the engineers started  digging out a large pool in an area much higher than the palace.
Below this, the water from the  Royal Canal would flow into an underground pipe and collect in a well 60 meters below  the pool. At the top of the well, the engineers installed a waterwheel, equipped  with buckets that could be turned by an animal. This would raise the water up to the surface  and fill the storage pool with around 400 cubic meters of water.
Having all of this water stored  above the palace pressurized the entire system, and at the same time, gave the palace a  backup supply of water in times of drought. From here, the water passed over  an aqueduct and into the palace, where things start to get really interesting. The water would split off into a complex  network of carefully designed channels, carrying just the right amount of water to the  pools and fountains all around the palace - the most impressive of which was located at the  heart of the palace.
Built in the 14th century, it featured 12 lions that each shot out a jet  of water to show what time of day it was. In a controlled sequence, the lions would activate  hour by hour, until all of them were spouting out water by midday. The system would then  reset itself and the process would start again.
But how was this possible with  medieval technology? Inside the fountain was an early version of  the Opera web browser. Just kidding… Opera R2 is the next generation of web  browsing, with elevated music and video playback capabilities and a whole new way to deal  with tabs.
Without interrupting your browsing experience, you can control your music and even  watch YouTube while you browse. Just hover over the player icon of your music streaming  service to skip a song, and pop-out your YouTube video and stick it in the corner while  you browse. Getting lost in your tabs is a thing of the past thanks to Tab Islands, which lets you  organize your tabs by category and automatically groups them together.
Opera also gives you a  subtle hint at your most recently used tabs, so you never lose track of what you’re doing.  Even split screening two pages is super easy, and can be done without opening different  windows. With Opera’s built-in AI features, you can get answers to questions without leaving  the page you are working on.
Just hit control plus slash to open the Aria command line and explore  more about any topic. With Aria’s image features, you can generate images and also upload  your own images to get a detailed rundown of what’s in the image. The look and feel of  Opera is fully customizable, with different themes that let you change the background, UI  colors, sounds and more.
Download Opera today with the link in the description and start  experiencing the next generation of browsing. In order for the Alhambra’s  central fountain to tell the time, the engineers came up with a very clever but  simple design. The large bowl at the center of the fountain had 12 holes placed at very specific  heights, each leading to a lion via a series of internal pipes.
A central pipe would fill  the bowl at a slow and constant rate, causing the water level to rise and activate the lions one  by one. The holes were so precisely calculated and the water supply was so constant that it would  take exactly one hour to reach the next hole. After 12 hours, the bowl would be full  of water and a clever siphon inside the bowl would reset the system naturally.
As  the water inside the bowl started to rise, so did the water in the siphon. Once  it reached the top of the siphon, it would curve and start falling down  the drainage pipe. At this point, a seal was created and no air could get in to  replace the falling water.
This activated the siphon and the surface tension of the falling  water would pull the rest of the water with it. In a matter of seconds, the bowl would drain  completely and the process would start again. The water from the lions would exit via 4  shallow channels in the ground and continue on throughout the palace, eventually reaching another  engineering marvel, the thermal baths.
This is where the kings and diplomats would come to relax  and make deals. It featured a cold plunge pool, a hot room with heated flooring and a steam  room. The water would enter a control room underground and pass through a copper boiler  that was heated by burning wood.
From here, the hot water would flow through pipes to various  fountains and showers around the baths. To provide under floor heating in the hot room, the steam  from the boiler was directed through channels underneath the marble floor. From there, the  steam would travel up through pillars in the steam room and exit through small vents, filling  the room with water vapor.
The roof had a series of star shaped windows that could be opened  and closed to control the level of steam. As the water continued on through the  Alhambra’s network of fountains, channels and pools it had another benefit, cooling.  Granada is an extremely hot part of Spain, but as the warm air blew over the pools  and fountains, the water would evaporate, cooling the air surrounding the palace and  making it a very comfortable place to be.
The water continued all the way through the  palace until it reached the western portion of the palace, where the soldiers lived. It  was built slightly higher than the rest of the palace and so the water had to make a final  6 meter climb to reach it. We saw how waterwheels were used to raise water, but for this section,  they came up with something much more impressive.
This was a special device that  didn’t require waterwheels, animals or any external  power, here’s how it worked. Water from the system would flow into  a container with a hole in the bottom leading down to another container below.  As the water traveled down the pipe, a whirlpool would form in the top  container.
At the center of the whirlpool, a low pressure area would form, sucking air  downwards and into the container below. Here, the air and water would mix and this gassy  water would be forced into a thin pipe. The potential energy in both pipes was the  same, meaning under normal circumstances, the water pushing down in this pipe would  push the water upwards equally in this pipe.
But since the water in the thinner pipe  was full of air bubbles, it was lighter and could travel higher up the pipe. By passing a  constant flow of water through the whirlpool, this device was able to raise water  6 meters higher than when it entered, providing water to the rest of the palace. Today,  many of the clever water systems around the palace still work, and it’s all thanks to the incredible  engineers who made them hundreds of years ago.
And now, time for the Primal Space giveaway.  The winner of the previous giveaway is Graeme, congrats! In the next video, we’ll be giving away  this awesome Alhambra framed print.
All you need to do is sign up at the link below, like the video  and leave a comment saying which part of the water system impressed you the most. Thank you very much  for watching and I’ll see you in the next video.
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