this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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The hydrologist in me always asks: why dig a well at the top of the hill? Surely that is more effort than digging it at the bottom of the hill where the water table is closer to the surface.
But I guess wells like this predate modern hydrology. And outhouses and such could be polluting the water as it flows down gradient. So the water at the top of the hill was likely cleaner and safer to drink...
I'd wish for clean drinking water in every well. ;)
Conjecture: if you assume people also live on the hill, it would be easier to carry pails back down than to carry them up from the bottom of the hill.
Only in a 2D world with the directions being limited to "up" and "down". Carrying it laterally around the circumference of the hill would be equally probable.
Aren't ancient wells often based on where springs were? Springs are often at the top of hills, aren't they?
This is a misapprehension. Springs are on hillsides, not hilltops. Basically, imagine there are two surfaces: the ground, and the water table. In some places, usually on hillsides, the water table will intersect the surface. Where that happens, a spring will exist.
But that water has to be under pressure for this to happen -- this is known as the hydrological gradient. Water flows down hill on the surface, and down gradient under ground. In order for there to be pressure on the water, enough to force it out a hillside, the water table somewhere in the hill needs to be physically higher in altitude than the spring.
In other words, it rains on top of the hill, and the rain soaks into the ground. That water wants to flow downhill, so it flows out of the ground on the sides of the hills. But this means a spring will never flow from the top of a hill.
A true man of the people! With the right connections, you'd do quite well in 14th century Europe!
Wishes flow best in vuggy volcanic strata, so well location is based on luck hitting a vug or interconnected seam. Any wishes in sandstone were used up millennia ago for plants to eat or, apparently in one case, death by meteor.
It is a divine rain reservoir.