What on Earth are those? I thought to myself shortly before landing in the Iranian city of Esfahan one summer. From the aeroplane window, I could see what looked like a cross between freakishly large anthills and obscure symbols left by an extraterrestrial race. Little could I – then only a teenager – have guessed what lay beneath their mysterious surfaces.
If, throughout the ages, there’s one element my people have revered more than fire – known as the ‘Son of God’ in the ancient Iranian faith of Zoroastrianism – it’s undoubtedly water. The Iran in which various Aryan tribes settled millennia ago was a rich, vast and variegated expanse of land, as it is today. It also, however, happened to be incredibly dry. The ancient Iranians had a huge task not only to survive, but also to conquer almost all their then-known world.
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180619-irans-ancient-engineering-marvel
