3w ago

TIL ancient Persians built desert freezers called 'Yakhchals' around 400 BC that kept ice frozen year-round using evaporative cooling and smart architecture.

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Yakhchāl - Ancient Desert “FREEZER” Invented Around 400 bc In Persia

2mo ago

TIL Ancient Persians built Yakhchāls, innovative ice storage structures dating back to 400 BC. These dome-shaped coolers used evaporative cooling to keep ice frozen even during hot summers.

www.utubepublisher.in /2025/05/The-ancient-cooling-system-yakhchal.html

25 comments

Yeah, Crusader Kings III taught me those existed, and not too long ago, it had me dive into a Wikipedia rabbit hole. They also used shade walls and radiative cooling to create ice during cold desert nights, which then remained long enough to be harvested in the morning and put into well-constructed ice houses like this. Also, wind catchers and Qanats.
This was a quest in Breath of the Wild
- A game is forcing me to cross-dress to gain access to an all-female area, inhabited by tall beautiful mommies? "Ohnooo"
  It was the Gerudo icehouse quest! It's amazing to me how close to history I am sort of. When my grandma was little, they didn't have fridges, and they used to pile snow and ice and compact it and then cover it with sawdust, behind the sauna where the sun wouldn't be shining. She said it usually lasted till around June. Perhaps even later can't remember and can't ask anymore. RIP.
Arizona seniors would like this.
This was an area in Wizard101
Stuff You Should Know covered this
frequently including sand, clay, egg white, goat's hair, lemon juice, ash, and a technical water-
The fuck is goat's hair? Isn't it called fur? Unless it's specifically fur on their head?
- I think it's rather to distinguish between fur as being understood from skinning the animal and using the resulting hide including the hair versus cutting the hair from the skin and receiving the single hair strands and using those strands in construction.
  But just how I imagined it is meant, no idea if that is true.
  
  Seems like loose goat hair with clay could be used similarly to fiberglass with resin, or steel reinforcements in cement, just a different use case.
- Horse hair is very much a thing and used for insulation. I lived in an apartment in Boston built in the 1890s that had horse-hair insulation.
  I do think it's from the mane and tail and not the fine fur of the body. But that would just be an assumption.
- No I don't think so. For instance we say cat hair but they have fur. I think it's just a weird English thing.
  Usually hair is long and typically sparse on animals like us, fur is short and covers the whole body like a moose.
Wow! Just look at them now! 😅
- Hey, will you explain this to me? I don't get it.
  
  Essentially, they went on to become Iran. 🤢

25 comments