Aqueduct

An aqueduct is a constructed watercourse, whether an open channel, pipe, tunnel or canal, that carries water from its source to a distant point of use. The Assyrians built an aqueduct roughly 80 kilometers long in the 7th century BCE to supply their capital, Nineveh, including a raised section 10 meters high crossing a valley 300 meters wide, and the Minoans of Crete are believed to have used aqueducts as part of an advanced irrigation system as early as 2000 BCE. Although aqueducts are most closely associated with ancient Rome, the Romans refined an existing technology rather than inventing it, building aqueduct systems throughout their empire to engineering standards that, in the case of the city of Rome's combined network of more than 415 kilometers, were not surpassed for over a thousand years.