Christian Leibundgut and Ingeborg Vonderstrass formulated the following thesis in connection with their work ‘Traditional Irrigation - a Cultural Heritage of Europe’ (2016): ‘Irrigation is as old as agriculture itself (Neolithic period). It has both developed indigenously and spread through the transfer of knowledge.’ In fact, irrigation systems in many parts of Europe have surprisingly uniform basic structures. Ellen Churchill Semple wrote as early as 1929 that there must be something like a ‘self-evident’ technique of traditional irrigation. Autochthonous development and knowledge transfer were thus equally at play. Read on to find out how they have fertilised each other over the millennia. Source: ‘Traditional Irrigation - a Cultural Heritage of Europe’, Volume 1 (ISBN 978-3-905817-74-4).
Geschichte der Traditionellen Bewässerung Europas (History of Traditional Irrigation in Europe, pdf, in German)
Volume 1 of the work ‘Traditional Irrigation - a Cultural Heritage of Europe’ contains a comprehensive treatise on the history and origins of traditional irrigation in Europe.