Les barrages dans l'histoire : Géographie des foyers d'innovation et des influences technologiques

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Historical centres of innovation in hydraulics, particularly in the technology of dams, are scattered throughout the world. If the first dams were built in the Middle East, most of the hydraulic works appeared during the first millennium BC and the first millennium AD in several arid regions of the different continents, but they were spatially isolated. The Middle East and the Mediterranean margins developed complex technological exchanges during more than one thousand years before the emergence of the European centre at the end of the Middle Ages. As early as the XVI^th century. Europe was the heart of modern technology and irrigated ancient hydraulic domains, through the processes of colonization and economic influences.