China's Grand Canal, completed in the thirteenth century and stretching almost 1,200 miles (1,930 km) from northern Beijing to Hangzhou in the south, is the oldest still in use today. Although the most ancient part of this waterway dates as far back as 486 B.C.E, canals had been in use for irrigation and transportation for centuries prior to this. The earliest evidence suggests that artificial waterways were excavated and in use across Iraq and Syria by 4000 B.C.E.
The first British canal, the Fossdyke, was built by the Romans, but it was not until the birth of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-eighteenth century that the construction of a canal network began in earnest, eventually totalling almost 4,000 miles (6,440 km). Canal systems also proliferated throughout Europe and the United States, with horse-drawn barges providing the principal means of cheap transportation for coal, cotton, and other commodities.
The advent of railroads in the mid-nineteenth century spelled the beginning of a decline for British canals, many of which fell into disuse for more than a hundred years until their rediscovery for boating vacations. In mainland Europe and North America, however, the distances to be traveled were much greater. Despite the arrival of the railroads, investment was warranted in wide and deep canals to admit seagoing ships into the heart of those continents; industry has reaped the benefits of canal-borne bulk transportation to this day.
Perhaps the most famous canals are those that have drastically shortened circuitous and treacherous sea voyages, including the Suez Canal of 1869, linking Europe and the East, and the Panama Canal of 1914, between the Pacific and the Atlantic, both remarkable testaments to engineering vision.
