Irrigation Postcards
This website is an online gallery of postcards related to irrigation. The mission of irrigationtechnik.com is to show some of the amazing history of irrigation development in the last few centuries.
Humanity – despite its immense cultural sophistication and many technological accomplishments – owes its existence to a thin layer of topsoil and irrigation.
The origins of irrigation date back to the 6th millennium B.C. in Mesopotamia. The need for community irrigation systems to support early farming settlements led to the first civilizations. Early irrigation schemes required enormous investments of capital and labor. The first irrigation engineers had to solve the complex problems of designing, building and maintaining irrigation systems, leading to fundamentals advancements in society.
Much time has elapsed since the development of agriculture and the rise of irrigation societies, although many of the same problems remain. Engineers today may be encouraged by the fascinating history recorded on the postcards here.