Excerpt:
If the word hydraulics is understood to mean the use of water for the benefit of mankind, then its practice must be considered to be even older than recorded history itself. Traces of irrigation canals from prehistoric times still exist in Egypt and Mesopotamia; the Nile is known to have been dammed at Memphis some six thousand years ago to provide the necessary water supply, and the Euphrates River was diverted into the Tigris even earlier for the same purpose. Ancient wells still in existence reach to surprisingly great depths; and underground aqueducts were bored considerable distances, even through bedrock. In what is now Pakistan, houses were provided with ceramic conduits for water supply and drainage some five thousand years ago; and legend tells of vast flood-control projects in China barely a millenium later. All of this [1] clearly demonstrates that men must have begun to deal with the flow of water countless millenia before these times.