How did people know where to dig a well before they had access to technology we have today (or the possibility to use drills we have now that you can use pretty much everywhere and drill deep enough that you’ll find water anyway)?
If you’re only using manual labour, you cannot dig very deep so finding water isn’t guaranteed. So how did they figure out where they should dig to find water? (I mean especially in the context of wells on farms or communal wells in villages.)
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There’s actually a layer underneath the soil where there’s a bunch of water-saturated dirt. It’s called an “aquifer”. If you get to it, you get water to “well” in the space. Unless you’re in a desert, water is a constant.
The thickness (and depth) of the water table can vary based on the terrain & rainfall. This means you can generally make an educated guess from the environment.
In a given area tho, the table is often pretty flat. If a nearby town has a well that worked at X depth, you’ll typically be fine around that deep too.
That said, “water witching” was the original explaination. Basically, “Bippity Boppity Bullshit, Water Is Right Here Because The Spirits Say So”. One of the oldest cons in the book, but people believed it because they were basically betting on rounding errors.
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