Being a civil engineering student I am always fascinated by new technologies, firstly for their ingenuity, and secondly for their lack of the same.  In several quoted articles and images below I highlight how engineers thousands of years ago developed systems that were arguably much more sustainable as compared to many of our supposedly advanced unsustainable modern engineering systems that rely heavily on energy inputs.
 
Engineers thousands of years ago knew (as we should today) that systems with less moving parts, less energy - time - or value inputs, working in a symbiotic way with the environment will yield long term truly sustainable building energy management systems.

The example I will focus on in this blog is: Qanat [Kareez] systems(underground hand-dug tunnels for extracting groundwater in the dry and semi-arid regions of Iran and the works of many engineers and scholars who have come before me).