The oldest dated well was cut through Cypriot limestone 10,000 years ago
Around 8400 BC, before they had even learned to make pottery, villagers at Kissonerga-Mylouthkia on Cyprus drove a round shaft eight metres down through solid limestone to reach water. It is the oldest reliably dated well known, and a later one at the same site went down 13 metres.
Early wells cluster around the eastern Mediterranean. A drowned settlement at Atlit-Yam, off the coast near Haifa, preserves the first known stone-lined well, about 5.5 metres deep and dating to around 7000 BC. In central Europe, farmers of the Linear Pottery culture lined their wells with timber; examples in the Czech Republic, Germany and Austria date to about 5300 to 5200 BC.
In China, a Neolithic well at Hemudu was cased with four rows of logs topped by a square frame, and around 600 BC dozens of tile-lined wells southwest of modern Beijing supplied drinking and irrigation water. Chinese engineers then turned well technology to other resources. About 2,250 years ago in Sichuan they dug the first recorded salt well, and in 347 CE they drilled the earliest known oil wells, reaching some 240 metres with bits mounted on bamboo poles. The oil was burned to boil brine into salt, and by the 10th century bamboo pipelines linked oil wells to salt springs.
Lifting the water took ingenuity too. In Egypt the shadoof, a counterweighted pole, raises water about 3 metres, while the sakia, a geared wheel, can draw it from 10 metres down. Until recent centuries every well was dug by hand and worked without pumps, and such wells remain vital in many rural areas today, reaching depths of up to 60 metres. Their importance echoes through culture, from Jesus meeting a woman at Jacob's well to the nursery rhyme about a cat stuck in one.
Modern methods vary. Caissoning sinks precast concrete rings as diggers excavate beneath a cutting edge, shielding them from collapse. Driven wells push a hardened point and screened pipe into loose ground, and machine-drilled wells, cased in steel or plastic, reach far deeper aquifers than any shovel. Well water usually carries more dissolved minerals than surface water.
Source: Well
