As an Iranian, this is the first time I hear about these windmills! Unfortunately, the only source of info about them is this National Geography video.<p>There is no exclusive page for them on wikipedia, but I could find how they work generally here: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panemone_windmill" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panemone_windmill</a>
Fascinating how these windmills come across as a symbiosis between man and nature.<p>They’re an integral part of the landscape, part of the culture (or used to be), and harness the local environment to produce something. Same goes for rice terraces, vineyards, etc.<p>And yet I see many people complain about us sticking wind turbines on top of hills.<p>One can only imagine how the Iranian wind wills were received a thousand years ago.<p>I suspect it will take a generation or two for these turbines to turn them in to an integral part of our life as well. Or utter necessity.
Another film about the windmills:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv3Pn2DFkDw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv3Pn2DFkDw</a><p>From the International Wood Culture Society, who have a ton of other wood-related content:<p><a href="http://iwcs.com/allSubject.cfm" rel="nofollow">http://iwcs.com/allSubject.cfm</a>
Iran also has ancient natural air conditioning tech<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher</a><p>Persians are very smart people
There's likely an interesting Ship of Theseus debate to be had about whether these are indeed thousand-year-old windmills, and whether it's accurate to consider the windmills build a thousand years ago to be "still standing".