【正文】
Some individuals might have led water where they wanted it through trenches dug in the earth, a hollow log was perhaps used as the first water pipe. Thousands of years must have passed before our more recent ancestors learned to build cities and enjoy the convenience of water pipes to the home and drains for watercarried wastes. Our earliest archeological records of central water supply and wastewater disposal date back about 5000 years, to Nippur of Sumeria. In the ruins of Nippur there is an arched drain with the stones set in full voussoir position, each stone being a wedge tapering downward into place. Water was drawn from wells and extensive system of drainage conveyed the wastes from the palaces and residential districts of the city. The earliest recorded knowledge of water treatment is in the Sanskrit medical lore and Egyptian Wall inscri ptions. Sanskrit writings dating about 2021 . tell how to purify foul water by boiling in copper vessels,exposing to sunlight, filtering through charcoal, and cooling in an earthen vessel. The earliest known apparatus for clarifying liquids was pictureed on Egyptian walls in the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries . The first picture represents the siphoning of either water of settled wine. A secon