Christophe Monteil
60 waters drawn from the sources of human history
that shaped our world
From the Arctic to the conquest of space · 8 chapters · A human odyssey
Since the origin of the Earth, water shapes the landscapes, accompanies the appearance of life and runs through human history.
These sixty waters, drawn from symbolic places on the planet, compose a simple narrative: that of the Earth and the odyssey of humanity.
Chapter One
The water of the world's first mornings
N° 01
Arctic Ocean
Water of the polar world
The Arctic Ocean covers 14 million km². Its sea ice regulates the temperature of the entire planet by reflecting the sun's rays. Without this white mirror, the Earth would warm twice as fast. The Arctic is the world's thermostat.
N° 02
South Pole
Water of the white continent
Antarctica contains 70% of the planet's freshwater reserves, locked in an ice sheet 34 million years old. Its ice cores allow us to read 800,000 years of Earth's climate, layer by layer, like the pages of a book no one had yet opened.
N° 03
Greenland, Denmark
Water of the primordial glaciers
The Sermeq Kujalleq glacier, one of the most active in the world, produces 46 km³ of ice per year. The icebergs that break off can take 15,000 years to form. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, this bay is one of the most spectacular windows onto our planet's climate history.
N° 04
Wyoming, United States
Water of the Earth's inner fire
Yellowstone sits atop one of the largest active supervolcanos on the planet. It concentrates more than 10,000 geysers and hydrothermal springs — half of all those that exist on Earth. The Old Faithful geyser has erupted every 90 minutes for centuries. The Earth breathes aloud here.
N° 05
Siberia, Russia
Water of absolute antiquity
25 million years old. 1,642 metres deep — the deepest lake in the world. Lake Baikal alone contains 20% of all the planet's liquid surface freshwater. Its waters harbour 3,600 living species, two thirds of which exist nowhere else.
Chapter Two
The water of the first steps
N° 06
Tanzania
Water of the cradle of humanity
1.8 million years ago, Homo habilis made the first stone tools in history here. The Olduvai Gorge has yielded more human fossils than any other site on Earth. This is where humanity began to transform the world.
N° 07
Ethiopia
Water of the mother of humanity
On 24 November 1974, Lucy was discovered here — Australopithecus afarensis, 3.2 million years old. She walked upright. She is our direct ancestor. The Awash River flowing through Hadar is the same water that flowed beneath her feet.
N° 08
Kenya
Water of the first peoples
Lake Turkana is the largest desert lake in the world — 250 km long in the heart of an arid region. Its shores have yielded human fossils 4 million years old, including the famous Turkana Boy, an almost complete Homo erectus skeleton.
N° 09
Morocco
Water of the first human face
In 2017, fossils discovered here pushed the appearance of Homo sapiens back to 300,000 years — 100,000 years earlier than previously believed. The first known human face looked at this sky, drank this water, walked on this ground.
N° 10
Botswana / Namibia / South Africa
Water of invisible survival
The Kalahari covers 900,000 km². The San peoples have lived here for 20,000 years without any apparent water source — they extract moisture from roots, tubers and wild melons. Their knowledge of invisible water is the most sophisticated that exists.
N° 11
Botswana
Water of the first beliefs
These four quartzite hills bear more than 4,500 rock paintings — the greatest concentration of rock art in the world. Human presence attested for 100,000 years. For the San peoples, the Tsodilo Hills are where the gods first set foot.
N° 12
Northern Territory, Australia
Water of the oldest continuous human presence
Indigenous peoples have inhabited Kakadu for 65,000 years without interruption — the oldest known continuous human presence on Earth. Its 20,000 rock art sites tell an unbroken story of humanity.
N° 13
Dordogne, France
Water of the first artists
17,000 years ago, people entered the Lascaux cave and painted 600 animals with astonishing mastery of movement and perspective. They lived on the banks of the Vézère — the everyday water of the first humans who felt the need to create beauty.
Chapter Three
The water of gods and myths
N° 14
Wiltshire, England
Water of the mystery of time
Built between 3,000 and 1,500 BC, Stonehenge is precisely aligned with the summer and winter solstices. Some of its stones were transported from Wales — 280 km away. No writing, no names, no explanation. Just stones raised towards the sky.
N° 15
Benin
Water where the visible and invisible meet
Lake Nokoué is the cradle of Beninese voodoo, one of the world's most complex cosmogonies. On its waters stands Ganvié — a lake city of 30,000 inhabitants, founded in the 17th century by peoples fleeing slave traders.
N° 16
Tibet, China
Water of the gods
6,638 metres. Mount Kailash has never been climbed. It is considered sacred by four religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Bön. It is the centre of the world for one billion believers. Its four faces give birth to four of Asia's great rivers.
N° 17
Himalayas, Uttarakhand, India
Water before it becomes sacred
At 4,000 metres altitude, the Gangotri glacier is the source of the Ganges. 30 km long, it has been retreating 22 metres a year for a century. This is where the water is born — cold, silent, still mineral, before the temples and the prayers.
N° 18
Uttar Pradesh, India
Water that dissolves death to free the soul
Varanasi is one of the longest continuously inhabited cities in the world — more than 3,000 years. Every day, hundreds of bodies are cremated on the ghats of the Ganges. For Hindus, dying here breaks the cycle of reincarnations.
N° 19
China · Myanmar · Laos · Thailand · Cambodia · Vietnam
Water that nourishes kingdoms
4,900 km. The Mekong crosses six countries and directly feeds 60 million people. Its tributary lake, the Tonle Sap in Cambodia, reverses its current twice a year — a phenomenon unique in the world. It is to Southeast Asia what the Nile is to Egypt.
N° 20
Peru / Bolivia
Water of Andean myths
3,812 metres altitude — the highest navigable lake in the world. 8,400 km² of surface. For the Incas, the sun itself was born from its waters. This lake is both a cosmos and a spring — the sky laid upon the Earth.
N° 21
Yucatán, Mexico
Water of the mirror of the underworld
This natural well of 60 metres in diameter and 27 metres deep was for the Maya the gateway to Xibalba — the underground world of the rain gods. Thousands of offerings were thrown into it over the centuries. The still water of the cenote reflects the sky.
N° 22
Northern Territory, Australia
Water of the ancient heart of the Earth
This 348-metre red sandstone monolith has been sacred to the Anangu people for 10,000 years. When rain falls on Uluru, it runs in cascades along its flanks in precise paths that oral tradition has described for millennia.
Chapter Four
The water of the builders
N° 23
Israel / Palestine
Water of human prayers
Jerusalem is the only city simultaneously sacred to the three great monotheistic religions. Inhabited for 5,000 years, it has been destroyed and rebuilt 18 times. The Gihon Spring, which supplied the ancient city, still flows beneath it.
N° 24
Saudi Arabia
Water of the spiritual centre
Each year, 2.5 million pilgrims converge on Mecca for the Hajj — the world's largest peaceful human gathering. The Zamzam well has flowed without interruption for 4,000 years according to Islamic tradition.
N° 25
Upper Egypt
Water of cosmic resurrection
At Luxor stand the temples of Karnak and Luxor — 3,400 years of history built in stone. The annual flooding of the Nile was for the Egyptians the death and resurrection of Osiris. The priests measured its level at the nilometer with absolute precision.
N° 26
Egypt
Water of the pharaohs
The Pyramids of Giza were built around 2,560 BC. The Great Pyramid of Khufu, 146 metres high, remained the tallest structure in the world for 3,800 years. The Nile carried these stones from Aswan. Without the river, no pyramids.
N° 27
Jordan
Water of the mastered desert
Carved from rose-pink rock 2,300 years ago by the Nabataean people, Petra was a city of 20,000 inhabitants in the heart of an arid desert. The Nabataeans built a system of channels, cisterns and dams to collect every drop of rain.
N° 28
Greece
Water of maritime myths
This archipelago of 220 islands is the cradle of ancient Greek civilisation. As early as 3,000 BC, the Cycladic civilisation developed art, trade and navigation. The Aegean Sea is the first great school of human thought.
N° 29
Italy
Water of imperial power
At its peak in the 2nd century, Rome had a million inhabitants — the first megacity in history. Eleven aqueducts supplied the city with 1 million cubic metres of water per day. Roman law still shapes the legal systems of more than 150 countries today.
N° 30
Rome, Italy
Water of the breath of faith
The world's smallest state — 44 hectares — is the spiritual centre of 1.4 billion Catholics. The monumental fountains of St Peter's Square have flowed without interruption since the 17th century — water that has never stopped.
N° 31
France
Water of European memory
Built from 1163 on the Île de la Cité, in the middle of the Seine, Notre-Dame is the most visited monument in Europe. The Seine has flowed around it for 850 years. In April 2019, the world watched its spire fall — and understood what it represented.
N° 32
Italy
Water of an improbable city
Built on 118 islands connected by 400 bridges, Venice rests on 10 million wooden piles driven into the lagoon. In the Middle Ages it invented modern banking and international trade. A city born of the impossible, built on water to survive war.
N° 33
Cambodia
Water of the Khmer empire
Angkor Wat is the world's largest religious complex — 400 km². The Khmer empire built an extraordinary hydraulic system capable of irrigating 900 km² of rice fields. When that system collapsed, the city was abandoned. Water had built everything. Its absence destroyed everything.
N° 34
Peru
Water of Inca civilisation
Built around 1450 at 2,430 metres altitude, Machu Picchu was connected to a network of fountains and canals drawing from sixteen natural springs. The Incas had calculated that the city would receive exactly the water it needed — no more, no less.
N° 35
Beijing, China
Water of imperial command
980 buildings, 72 hectares surrounded by moats 52 metres wide. The Forbidden City was the centre of Chinese power for 500 years. It was designed according to feng shui principles: water circulates through it along precise paths to balance energies.
N° 36
China
Water of human frontiers
21,196 km long — the greatest human construction in history. Built over more than two millennia, the Great Wall required a constant water supply for the hundreds of thousands of workers and soldiers who built and guarded it.
Chapter Five
The water of great horizons
N° 37
South Africa
Water of the planetary passage
In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded this cape for the first time — opening the sea route between Europe and Asia. The world would never be the same again. Here the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. A cape that changed the global economy for five centuries.
N° 38
Ushuaia, Argentina
Water of extremes
The southernmost point of the Americas, at 55 degrees south latitude. For centuries, rounding Cape Horn was the ultimate test for sailors — force 12 winds, 30-metre waves, icebergs. More than 800 ships have sunk here.
N° 39
Guadeloupe, Caribbean, France
Water of the last morning of before
On 3 November 1493, Christopher Columbus landed on Marie Galante during his second voyage. Here began the irreversible transformation of the world: the encounter between two humanities that had been unknown to each other for millennia. The water of this island was the last water of a world still intact.
N° 40
United States
Water of hope and globalisation
Between 1892 and 1954, 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island, in New York harbour. They came from Europe, fleeing poverty and persecution. The Statue of Liberty was the first thing they glimpsed through the Hudson mist.
N° 41
Vietnam
Water of the millennial trees
Cuc Phuong forest is one of the oldest tropical forests in Southeast Asia — some of its trees are more than 1,000 years old and reach 70 metres in height. It survived glaciations, wars, and Agent Orange defoliants.
N° 42
Japan
Water of volcanoes and clouds
3,776 metres. Fuji is an active stratovolcano whose last eruption was in 1707. Its snows feed several rivers and sacred lakes at its feet. It has been a pilgrimage site since the 7th century. The most painted, most photographed, most dreamed-of mountain in the world.
N° 43
Australia
Water of an oceanic metropolis
Sydney Harbour is one of the most beautiful natural bays in the world — 55 km of indented coastline. Founded in 1788 as a British penal colony, Sydney symbolises the last great expansion of humanity towards a vast and immense ocean.
N° 44
Paris, France
Water of the industrial age
Built in 1889 for the World's Fair, the Eiffel Tower was then the tallest structure in the world — 330 metres. This monument, mocked at its birth, became the symbol of industrial modernity and the most visited structure in the world.
Chapter Six
The water of the price of freedom
N° 45
France
Water of the price of freedom
On 6 June 1944, 156,000 Allied soldiers landed on five Norman beaches. It was the largest amphibious operation in history. 10,000 of them lost their lives. The English Channel, cold and grey, is the water that separates servitude from freedom.
N° 46
Japan
Water of nuclear memory
On 6 August 1945, at 8:15 am, the first atomic bomb exploded 600 metres above Hiroshima. 140,000 people died. Thousands of burn victims threw themselves into the Ota River. That morning humanity entered an era in which it possessed the power to erase itself.
N° 47
South Africa
Water of resistance
On this Atlantic island, 12 km from Cape Town, Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years. The cold water surrounding the island is an invisible prison. In 1990, Mandela walked out free. Robben Island is the water of a dignity that resists everything inflicted upon it.
N° 48
Germany
Water of the abolished frontier
From 1961 to 1989, the Berlin Wall cut a city — and a world — in two. The Spree flowed through it, indifferent to ideologies. Men died trying to swim across it. On 9 November 1989, the Wall fell. The water had been the same on both sides all along.
Chapter Seven
The water we failed to keep
N° 49
Tanzania
Water of the last snows
5,895 metres — the roof of Africa. Its summit glaciers have lost 85% of their surface since 1912. Scientists predict their complete disappearance before 2040. When they are gone, Kilimanjaro will be nothing but black rock beneath the sun.
N° 50
Zimbabwe / Zambia
Water of primordial power
1,708 metres wide, 108 metres high. Victoria Falls is the world's largest curtain of water — twice as wide as Niagara Falls. The Kololo people call it Mosi-oa-Tunya: the smoke that thunders. Today its flow diminishes every year.
N° 51
Botswana
Water of the river that never reaches the sea
The Okavango travels 1,600 km from the high plateaus of Angola and is lost in the desert — never reaching the sea. This inland delta of 15,000 km² is one of the world's richest ecological sanctuaries. The water evaporates entirely into the sand.
N° 52
Brazil
Water of the Earth's lung
The Amazon River discharges 20% of all the freshwater that reaches the oceans. The Amazon rainforest produces its own rain. In a century, 17% of this forest has disappeared. With it disappears a water that did not fall from the sky — it was made.
N° 53
Queensland, Australia
Water of primordial life
2,300 km long — the largest living ecosystem on Earth, visible from space. Built by tiny organisms over 500,000 years, it shelters 9,000 species. Since 1985, it has lost 50% of its corals due to ocean warming.
N° 54
Ecuador
Water of living evolution
In 1835, Charles Darwin spent five weeks in the Galápagos and observed species that exist nowhere else. In 1859, he published The Origin of Species and humanity understood that it was part of life, not above it.
N° 55
Chile
Water of the stone guardians
The most isolated island in the world — 3,700 km from the Chilean coast. Its inhabitants erected 900 moai statues. Then the civilisation collapsed — through deforestation, soil exhaustion and lack of fresh water. Easter Island is the mirror of what happens when a civilisation consumes its planet.
N° 56
Bolivia
Water of the celestial mirror
10,582 km² of salt — the largest salt flat in the world, at 3,656 metres altitude. Uyuni contains 50 to 70% of the world's lithium reserves. When it rains, a thin layer of water transforms the salar into a perfect mirror of the sky.
Chapter Eight
The water we will carry
N° 57
Nepal / Tibet
Water of the melting summits
8,849 metres — the roof of the world. Its glaciers supply hundreds of millions of people in South Asia with fresh water. Since the first ascent by Hillary and Tenzing in 1953, more than 6,000 mountaineers have climbed it. The eternal snow is no longer eternal.
N° 58
Arizona, United States
Water of the living Earth
446 km long, 1,800 metres deep. The Colorado took 6 million years to carve the Grand Canyon. It is the greatest history book of the Earth ever written. Today the Colorado is exhausted before reaching the sea — drunk entirely by Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles.
N° 59
Chile
Water of absolute absence
The driest desert in the world — some areas have not received rain for 400 years. Its extreme conditions make it the natural laboratory closest to conditions on Mars. What we learn here will be used to colonise other worlds.
N° 60
Provence, France
Water that fish will drink among the stars
At Cadarache, scientists are working to send fish eggs to the Moon to feed future human bases. Water, the absolute condition of life on Earth for 3.8 billion years, becomes the condition of life elsewhere. If humanity ever leaves this planet, it will take its water with it.
These sixty waters tell a simple and universal story.
From the first oceans to space exploration projects, water accompanies every stage of the history of the world. We were born from water. We built our civilisations through water. And if humanity must one day extend beyond this planet, it will take its water with it.
Water is the memory of the world.
And the key to our future.