When a dam fails

This lesson asks you to analyse how processes of the physical environment may affect human settlements in the future. The museum looks backwards: it links one past case in which the failure of a water structure ruined settled life, and your class must carry the question forward to the present and the future. ¹

Notice the expectation's words 'processes' and 'may affect'. Name the process, the settlement and the link between them, then ask what signs could have been noticed early and what the people could have done.

According to The Sealed Nectar's estimate, the bursting of the Marib Dam came in 450 or 451 CE ². After Yemen gained its independence from the first Abyssinian occupation in 378 CE, breaches began to appear in the dam, until the great flood came ². The dam had begun to be built in the time of the mukarrib kings of Saba, and it has great importance in the history of Yemen ^{3 2}. The author states that the flood was a major event that led to the ruin of civilisation and the scattering of peoples ², and that the migration of most clans of Kahlan from Yemen took place shortly before it, when their trade failed ⁴. How firm is the date? It is the author's estimate, and he notes the wide disagreement among the sources in fixing the years ⁵.

In this account the breaches came one after another before the great flood, and the record says nothing about repairs. What signs could people living below such a dam have noticed early, what could they have done, and what does the record leave out that you would need to know before judging them?

• The flood of al-Arim: the bursting of the dam and its effects, as the record gives them.
• The Marib Dam: the dam itself, from the time of the mukarribs of Saba.
• Qur'an 34:16: the verse this record cites for the flood; the lesson's card shows it.

Read the Flood of al-Arim and the verse the lesson links. Write a short chain of cause and effect, from the water structure to the people, using only what the record says. Then write one question about a settlement you know today.