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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To add to what everyone is already saying: In most places water isn’t actually that hard to find even without special instruments, education, or magical abilities. If you just start digging, there’s a great chance the hole will eventually start to flood with water for the reasons explained by many others here. Whether it’s the best source of water around is another question. But even a bad well is still a well.
Basically, as long as you don’t live in one of the driest places on earth, it’s possible you could have almost no knowledge at all and still find water. I’m guessing at the dawn of mankind, some caveman got bored, started digging deep into the ground, and was eventually greeted by a big puddle. Other cavemen caught on and started to realize this was a handy way to get water when you didn’t live right beside a river.
Seriously, even chimps know how to dig wells. https://www.newsweek.com/chimpanzees-dig-holes-water-new-behavior-1715201
They didn’t, they simply walked around with woo-woo sticks and picked a spot based on gut feeling calling it divination. Luckily, it doesn’t much matter which specific spot you pick, water table is locally same height and ground water is abundant almost anywhere so you are more likely than not to reach water pretty quick giving quick confirmation of the amazing power of the woo-woo sticks.
In modern times there is actually not much technology involved, you just pick a convenient spot and dig or drill, you might have some idea about the geology under your feet, but that can only be based on prior digs in the same area. Shallow wells are still usually hand dug, drilling buckets exist but if you are going to bring in the required equipment for that, you might as well drill much deeper.
Not finding water isn’t much of a hazard, most places people live at has plenty of groundwater. The real hazard is that you dig and there is a bloody boulder in the way, good luck with that.
So basically the water table isn’t a layer of pure water under some dirt.
Ever been to the beach? And dug a deep enough hole that the sand got wet even though no waves had gotten in? That’s the water table. It’s just dirt that’s wet, and digging a well means removing the dirt. It’s usually sea level but can go up higher if there’s rocks underneath it stopping it from seeping down further.
So using that logic, you can dig a hole anywhere near a source of water, and once you’re level with that water you’ll hit it. If you don’t have a source of water to go by you start in a valley so you don’t have to dig as far.
This Townsends video explains it really well. Here he is digging his own well with just tools of the time and he goes into why digging between high ground and a river will allow the well to fill with water.
There really isn’t too much science or whatever to determine where a well should be placed if you understand the basics. If you dig deep enough between a hill and a river, you will eventually hit water and your well will fill.
When I was a kid in the 70s my grandpa’s friend Mike was a dowser. People would pay him to walk around and I guess psychically find water using a stick.
I don’t believe in that stuff, but he did well enough he had a reputation and could afford a nice house on a lake.
I lived in northern California for a while, public water was limited and couldn’t be used for agricultural production.
My dad calls this old scraggly bearded gold miner who was a spitting imagine of Prospector Pete.
Guy had some kinda stick that he called a “water witch” this thing was supposed to point out the water?
Well my dad ended up listening to him an paid upwards to 30k to have this well dug.
Sure enough……….there was nothing.
Was watching a “log cabin” show last week where this guy was building a house by hand out in the woods and he brought in some guy who was an expert in dowsing. So the dowser said dig here and the guy dug about 4ft down and about 4ft in diameter when he hit rock and couldn’t go any further. Thems the breaks says the dowser and walked off.
40 years ago when we had our well drilled the well driller came out and asked me where I wanted the well drilled. I said over there and that’s where he drilled it. It’s been there ever since.
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