2600 BCE
Indus Valley urban sanitation
Mohenjo-daro and Harappa build covered drains and household water systems millennia ago. Source — Wikipedia:
Chronological Storyline (10 Milestones)
700 BCE
Persian qanats
Underground qanat aqueducts deliver water across arid Persia by gravity alone. Source — Wikipedia:
312 BCE
Roman aqueducts & sewers
Rome’s aqueducts and the Cloaca Maxima supply water and carry away waste at city scale. Source — Wikipedia:
256 BCE
Dujiangyan water management
China’s Dujiangyan diverts and regulates a river for irrigation and flood control without a dam. Source — Wikipedia:
1854 CE
Snow links water to cholera
John Snow traces cholera to a contaminated well, founding modern water-borne epidemiology. Source — Wikipedia:
1865 CE
London’s great sewer system
Joseph Bazalgette’s sewers end London’s cholera and the “Great Stink”. Source — Wikipedia:
1908 CE
Drinking-water chlorination
Jersey City begins systematic chlorination, making municipal water broadly safe. Source — Wikipedia:
1914 CE
Activated-sludge sewage treatment
The activated-sludge process enables effective biological treatment of wastewater. Source — Wikipedia:
1970 CE
Modern recycling & waste systems
Earth Day-era policy spreads municipal recycling and engineered waste management. Source — Wikipedia:
1990 CE
Circular-economy modelling
Industrial-ecology and circular-economy frameworks aim to design out waste entirely. Source — Wikipedia: