The twentieth century: dams and the epic struggle to control nature

For eons, rivers began their unimpeded treks to the oceans as trickles of water in the highlands of their watersheds. Making their way down mountain faces, initially via braided streams – and as they aged along flat lands – they descended vigorously and freely into torrents. Six thousand years ago, however, man began a centuries’ long quest to tame these watercourses. From that moment in Mesopotamia when the first dam1 was constructed on the Euphrates River,2 man has worked with vigor to break the natural flow of rivers by channeling, obstructing, barricading, and damming them. At no time in human history was this phenomenon truer than in the twentieth century. During that 100-year period, man – in the guise of engineer – was engaged in an epic struggle with Mother Nature, in order to vanquish and subjugate her. This Oedipal battle to construct a “wholesale transformation of natural environments,”3 which produced electricity, irrigated heretofore barren lands, and nourished urban expansion, went hand in hand with the fabrication of nature.4 Worldwide, only pocket-sized and limited stretches of rivers run wild today. Previously free-flowing rivers across the planet have been domestic-