W is for Wind

…The North wind is the wind of satisfaction,
the South wind overthrows the men it hits,
the East wind is the wind that brings rain,
and the West wind is mightier than the man living there.

Sumerian proverb, @1900 BCE.

In our alphabetic journey through Ancient Inventions, we are now into the last four letters, so I feel a bit of wind at my back. Which is good, since Wind is today’s topic–specifically, wind power and how ancient people used it.

In yesterday’s post on Valves, I described how ancient civilizations developed plumbing in order to control water. It is in the DNA of Homo sapiens–all the hominids–control the environment. We have always wanted to mold the world as we wished. What separated primates and apes in particular from other animals is tool use, and what seemed to caused hominids evolution was tool upon tool upon tool use. Fire-arrows-wheels-axes-thread-carrying slings all reflect continuous adaptation. We change things in the world to suit our needs until we try to shape the world into a tool for ourselves. This was modest 10,000 years ago with stone towers and calendars; bigger by the time of the pyramids, 5000 years ago. As of 2025 CE, it may be an experiment gone too far, now that the environment is fighting back.

However, in 3500 BCE, in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and even in the South Pacific, people understood there were significant forces of nature and wanted at least to use them to their advantage. Diverting water and controlling it with valves could irrigate the crops and grow a hungry population; sailing across water could lead to places with new goods or resources. Fire was the life-giver to humans, known early on to the oldest of hominids, and staying with us through our evolving species. Shaping the earth into houses or bowls for food was part of daily life. But the air they breathed–could they control it? The wind brought storms that wrecked the crops and disturbed the cattle–could they harness it?

For today’s questions, let’s ask:

1. How did ancient people try to use the wind? What counts as an ancient “wind machine”?
2. When and where did civilizations try to harness wind power?
3. What do these ancient approaches to taming the wind tell us about our ancient selves?

Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind!

Winds were powerful and invisible forces. If anything would lead humans to conceive of a god, it would be a god of wind, which is why often the head god guy was in control of wind, storm, the sky, and the air itself. Wind controlled everything, even the force within oneself. For instance, Vaya was the Hindu god of air, breath and wind. An ancient Hindu story says the gods tried to outdo each other, until they realized that without Vaya, none of them could survive. Breath was an essence of life more fundamental than anything else.

Consider also the Assyrian “king of the evil wind-demons,” Pazuzu. He could bring an evil wind but was in control all the other evil winds. One possible approach the Assyrians tried was to domestic him, to bring him into the house as a god and to give him offerings. Appealing to wind power, then, might be like appealing to the wind god. Light a few candles to Pazuzu, and he might just keep the storm from destroying your barley. Maybe.

I am Pazuzu, son of Hanpu, king of the evil wind-demons (lilû),
I ascended a mighty mountain that quaked,
and the (evil) winds that I ran into there were headed West.
One by one, I broke their wings.

Franz Wiggerman, example of an incantation to Pazuzu.

In general, ancient people put the wind gods first as evidence that they knew they could not tame the wind the way they moved water or shaped earth. They had to accept wind’s power and build around it. That might be by constructing simple machines that worked with a push: sails, windmills, or kites.

Yet even before constructing “machines,” a way to build around wind was literally to build around it–create a city that uses the wind. Assyrians might put the statue of Pazuzu inside to accept offerings. But it also helped to have the house and the streets outside accept the wind at the right time in the right way.

Open the Streets to the Four Winds

The 19th century BCE kings of Sumeria, according to linguist J. Neumann, built some of their cities in an attempt to capture favorable winds. Neumann’s analysis wasn’t about architecture but linguistics; he was trying to show previous mis-translations of northwest as north and southeast as south. Without getting into the translation weeds–since neither you nor I can debate the finer points of ancient Sumerian–Neumann’s main point is that the Sumerians didn’t use the directions north, east, west, and south. We take those directions for granted, but that’s not a universal. And, in particular, cities like Nineveh, Nippur, and Ashur were settled near mountains. The mountains changed the way the wind flowed, so they were more likely to view the directions accordingly.

Not only did they associate gods with winds from four directions, but they also built city streets and palace entryways to maximize wind flow. Thus, if you’re standing in downtown Nineveh in 1900 BCE in the summertime, and it’s 102 in the shade (45 C), you might appreciate having that northwest wind blowing down the avenue. Neumann argues that the Sumerian cities were built to be “open to the winds,” to take advantage of how summer winds came off the mountains. One way to “harness” the wind then, is to understand how it moves in your climate. Then build around it.

Another, more subtle point perhaps, is that unlike the singular sun, the river rushing downstream, or solid earth, wind changes direction. Whether the directions are N-E-W-S or something else, early people understood that wind could shift, and, therefore, thought of them as multiple winds.

Over the Bounding Main

Sails were a more obvious ancient use of wind power, and, as we saw with letter “S,” the ships that used them might be 50,000 years old. We don’t know what the Polynesian ships looked like, but we do have paintings and descriptions of the ships that toured the Mediterranean and the Nile.

Egyptian ships originally used rectangular sails standing on the long end. Eventually, they realized that square was better or, better still, rectangular but broad to catch and manage the wind. The Phoenicians went straight to the wide rectangle and used it to build their trading empire.

Some time past the 2nd century CE, either from the Romans, Indians, or Arabs, a triangular sail was introduced. Triangular sails, also called lateens, can be manipulated to take advantage of winds to the side in a way that allows the ship to go against the wind. If you’ve ever tacked in a sailboat, you understand how to do this. While it is arduous and time-consuming, it’s possible, which allows another way to adapt to the wind’s force that doesn’t limit you to one direction. Harnessing the wind meant learning how to use those differing directions.

Hammurabi and Hero of Alexandria: The Elusive Ancient Windmill

Did Hammurabi plan to windmills in the fields of barley? Other blogs on the “history of wind” seem to think so, but the academics aren’t sure. Several refer to Hammurabi’s plan to put windmills as irrigation devices into the crops, but none seem to know where Hammurabi said so. I sourced an article from 1955 in German, but could go no further. Hammurabi didn’t mention the grand windmill plan in his Code of Laws.

What is mentioned in the Code is penalties for inappropriate irrigation. Apparently, cities and their engineers became so adept at diverting water that the upstream towns wouldn’t leave enough for the downstream towns. But there’s nothing about wind power and Hammurabi to be found today. Perhaps someone in the 1950s just misread their ancient Babylonian.

In the first century CD, in Roman Egypt, a scientist named Hero, or Heron, of Alexandria did write the book on wind. His book on Pneumatics –by definition the use of air or gas power– covers dozens of types of devices which could produce water, wine, dragons hissing, or birds singing by the manipulation of air pressure. In other words, by understanding the smart application of the absence of wind and wind together, Hero could throw a great party. This is clear since over half the devices he describes are built around air-powered siphons and vessels which pour out wine.

There’s debate over whether Hero actually designed a windmill or wind wheel. His book included an organ powered by wind and a wheel turned with wind power, which some by the 18th century argued was a windmill. What’s curious to me is that all the automata, the different dancing satyrs and serpents, demonstrate a clear understanding of power as applied to small objects. But Hero didn’t seem to build objects on a large scale for useful purposes. Maybe the Roman emperors were fare more interested in bigger spectacles, like lions attacking Christians and so on. Hero didn’t seem to get funding for any of these projects. Strictly speaking, windmills were not officially built until the Persians of the Islamic Golden Age.

Floating Like a Leaf

So far, we’ve seen wind rushing down the alley ways to bring some summer relief, wind propelling sails across the waves, and wind turning globes with dancing figures. One more application remains: putting objects into the wind. Of course, arrows are one such object and early archers would have had to contend with wind conditions on a hunt or in battle.

But perhaps the most ancient wind machine goes back much further than we can guess. Kites were invented in the East, around the Pacific rather than the Mediterranean. The Chinese claim, which I will examine shortly, dates back to the Han dynasty. There is an older example, however. It’s a little dubious, so we will have to suspend our disbelief a little. I’m normally a “fact fact” kind of gal, want to see two sources, not just other people’s blogs. Don’t normally go for whispers on the wind–again, fitting to the topic. But let’s sift through the evidence, and you can draw your own conclusions.

In 1997 a German historian and kite enthusiast, Wolfgang Blieck, traveled to a small island in Indonesia called Muna. While touring the caves and reviewing the rock paintings, Blieck noticed one that appeared to be a person, a string, and an object. Maybe it was water pouring from a rock? Or maybe it was a person holding a kite in the sky? Blieck argued it was the latter.

In the 25+ years since, no one has attempted to confirm the story. There is only Blieck’s blurry photo and narration of his tour, translated from German. Yet kites in Indonesia do have a long popular history, still evident in the annual Bali Kite Festival. The kaghati kolepe is a style of Indonesian kite made from a large leaf, crossed bamboo, and a long vine, which are materials that have been available for centuries.

The kaghati even has spiritual reverberations. The kite is a special kind of appeal to the gods, going up to the heavens to find divine aid. Such leaf kites could have been invented at any point in Indonesia’s history of hominids, a history nearly a million years old. While, the rock painting in Muna is undated, similar paintings are tens of thousands of years old. Early humans in Indonesia might just have invented the first flying object, even before cities, calendars, or agriculture.

Kites Stand Ready to Battle

If the Indonesian claim lacks evidence, the Chinese claims vary in veracity as well. The general claim is that the infamous Lu Ban invented the kite, and, if you recall from the letter “U,” Lu Ban invented everything– other than the umbrella, which his wife invented. Since Lu Ban is more legend than person, it’s hard to date that first Chinese kite. The residents are Weifang, however, are less concerned about such details and showcase Lu Ban in a statue in front of their Kite Museum.

What is better documented is that during the Han dynasty, General Han Shin @200 BCE used a kite to measure the distance that his troops needed to dig a tunnel. (Further evidence of Chinese trigonometry.) Others note that Chinese archers did study wind direction carefully to unleash their deadly flight of arrows. Also in the Han dynasty, the Chinese created gunpowder and used it for fireworks, so they would also want to be cognizant of wind speed if they were planning to create explosions for fun or warfare.

If wind and kites could be used in battle tactics, why not have kites battle themselves? Kite battles have a long history in Japan, Korea, and China, and it’s a matter of interpretation whether these are battles of toys or not. Often wielded by grown-ups–usually men–with the intent of establishing dominance, these are adults manipulating winds to take advantage against a rival. Sounds like wind machines to me.

Looking back across all these examples emphasize how much wind power is more fickle than the other main elements. Mastering wind would not be as straightforward as simply knowing when it would rise, like the river. It would take knowing about all of the winds, from whichever direction, at whatever time of year. It would require knowing how air pressure worked, how the mountains changed the flow, and maybe how the gods would respond to the right offering.

I’m thinking about seeing if anyone has a used statue of Pazuzu that I could put in my hallway. Do you think he protects against earthquakes?