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INTRODUCTION
Management in drinking water supply has always been of fundamental importance for human kind from antiquity. Ancient populations in order to have the available water resources in their cities were obligated to make tremendous efforts concerning the planning, the construction, and the maintenance of long and complex aqueducts, many of them developed in underground construction for most of their length. Underground aqueducts (e.g. qanats, tunnels, various types of inclined galleries with and without shafts, or with inverted siphons) bring groundwater and/or surface water from an area usually mountainous to the lowlands, sometimes several kilometers away, from where water is used.
Aqueducts including underground structures were implemented in the ancient Hellenic world for over 5,500 years (De Feo et al. 2013). It should be noticed that no large-scale water lifting techniques were available, and water was transferred from the source (usually a spring) by aqueducts by gravity. For the semi-arid regions inhabited by the Hellenes during Prehistoric, Classical, and Hellenistic times, it was all too natural for every city to have its own water supply system as a basic feature of civilized life and development. Yet, because of the continuous wars between ancient Hellenic cities, aqueducts used to be hidden and subterranean rather than with visible conduits on bridges. The aqueduct system based on underground transport had been widely used by Hellenes and was reported as ancient already during Frontinius's time (ad 97), who was the commissioner of Rome's aqueduct. It had the advantage of protecting water from external impacts and pollution and at the same time was better maintained and preserved. An aqueduct of this type was composite. It was composed of tubes or channels, made of stone slabs or terracotta (Malacrino 2010).
The art of tunneling and the expertise in realizing deep shafts and underground canals to transport water since prehistoric times is suggested by the drainage works (drainage channels and polders) realized at Kopais basin (in Viotia, central Hellas) at the beginning of the 2nd millennium bc (Knauss 1991). The impressive remnants of this hydraulic work represent the most important land reclamation effort, including tunneling drains of Mycenaean Hellas (Koutsoyiannis & Angelakis 2004). To report for example the attempts of the Mycenaean civilization to cross the mountain ridge closing the basin with...