Water Development [antikvár]

WATER has always played a dominant part in the life of man. Biblical tradition has many references to the manifestations, destructive or creative, of this major element of nature. It all began with water: not until the waters under the heaven "gathered together unto one place" did the dry land appear (Genesis 1:9). Once uprisen from the waters, this land of ours has never ceased to depend on them. Our forefathers, who roved over the land with their flocks, held stubbornly on to their water-holes and fought for them under challenge. Rain was their other vital concern; without it there was no pasture, and it was the lack of it that drove Jacob and his sons into the unforgettable adventure in Egypt, Generations followed, and the nomadic mode of life gave way to settled existence, which always centred around available sources of water. Agriculture, its corollary, then relied almost entirely on direct rainfall, for, imlike their more fortunate neighbours in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Israelites had no great rivers to irrigate their fields, and the land was too hilly for extensive irrigation by the methods then known. Only near springs and along the few and small rivers was it possible to water the soil through a system of ditches. But, simultaneously, a remarkable development was taking place in the arid south, the Negev. Necessity, mother of invention, taught the settlers along the caravan routes how to extract a modicum of food from the desert, by conserving the scanty winter rainfall and applying it to the irrigation of small patches of fertile soil in wadi bed«. In his systematic exploration of the Negev, Prof. Ndsoo [3]