Ancient Dam

A view of a well preserved ancient dam in Central Syria. The structure is largely intact although it is now completely silted up. You can use the bus in the background to guide as scale.

Despite solid and lasting construction, the dam was apparently a failure because it quickly silted up. In such dry terrain, loose sands and silts easily ended up in the reservoir behind the dam. With time this has built up and eventually completely filled up all the spaces resulting in making the dam redundant. This is what also happening to all the modern dams that are being used right now, unless one can reduce the amount of accumulating silt behind the dam wall.