Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 2 -- Greek Philosophers
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (500-428 BC) lived in Athens until
being accused of heresy for asserting that the sun is not a god.
Anaxagoras solved the enigma of the Nile’s floods, which contrary
to the regime of other Mediterranean rivers, occur in summer. To
Anaxagoras, the flooding was due to Ethiopian snowmelt.
Anaxagoras envisioned percolated rainfall gathered in subterranean
caverns, hydrology’s first reservoir theory.
Rivers depend for their existence on the rains and on the water
within the earth, as the earth is hollow and has water in its
cavities.
The substratum rests on ether, the lightest of all elements, which in streaming upward, entrains
cavern-trapped rain water and caries it to springheads. Streams that cease flowing in summer
are fed from reservoirs too small to store enough water. Differing from Heraclitus, no new water
is generated within the earth.
Here's a schematic version of Anaxagoras' model.
If the porous upper stratum is plugged by downpours, the ether may exit forcibly as an
earthquake.
Democritus (460-370 BC) held that the world was round and was
composed of tiny atoms. His cosmology can be summarized by
words from the poet Percy Shelley (1792-1822).
Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
From creation to decay,
Like the bubbles on a river
Sparkling, bursting, borne away.
Springs
Ether
Ocean
We will later turn to Democritus to explain how "salt" atoms might drive underground fresh-water
rivers to mountain springs.
Hippon of Samos (c. 450 BC) wrote that all rivers, springs and wells have their source in the
ocean because the sea is the deepest, a unifying physical explanation for hydrologic linkage.
While invalid in light of modern hydrostatics, we're more-and-more seeing a logic that's turning
toward physical law.
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