Argon Pedion

'untilled plain') is the geological name of a "closed karst basin" in the Arcadian highlands in the Peloponnese peninsula of southern Greece.

Extensive forests dominate in the central north (Mainalo) and the central-south, following the prefectures southern border which marks the mountain chain of the Parnon, way down to the coast of the Argolic Gulf.

Valleys divide the mountain chains, but they are important draining paths only from November to April, while many brooks even dry up totally.

As the dry season may last for months, the thin rests of soil on mountain slopes are merely covered by Maquis shrubland, often of a degraded character.

This dries out the humidity of soil; the often closed character of karst depressions may cause floods, as subterranean drainage can be too slow.

But during the relatively short springtime, the rain of the last winter and mild temperatures may result in a very beautiful, blossoming season, where biodiversity of Arcadian landscapes will show (April, May).

As intensive dry summer periods may cause severe lack of freshwater, retaining it in reservoirs would be an important contribution to public health by supplying sufficient water at all times.

At the same time publicly supplied water for irrigation and, eventually, for electricity from power stations, could help to develop the country.

The rain down the mountains fills the draining ditches, then floods the untilled plain (grassland), making the soil sucked with water.

Water, which runs through the tectonically induced fractures chemically soluted the rock (karstifikation) and thus widened the fractions over time (dissolution) to the size of subterranean waterways, even caves.

Physical and chemical weathering and all kinds of water erosion washed the surfaces off the mountains,[4] over time, accumulating layers of loose sediment on the rocky floors of the basins.

The drainage between Argon Pedion and the spring Kiveri (Argolic Gulf) was confirmed as one of the large underground discharges.

It is interesting, that de reemerging of the karst water of Argon Pedion in the large submarine spring Kiveri was already known by the ancient author Pausanias.

[9] In rainy winters there may be more water than the only one katavothra, which opens in the limestone rock wall below the village Nestani, can drain rapidly enough.

The care necessary for cultivating and watering the plain in the dry summer period was achieved by walled irrigation wells with chunky shovels.

Drainage ditches are everywhere in the plain and obviously important to prevent it from becoming swampy, but taking care of holding the water table and the proper humidity for grassland and acres as long as possible is another thing.

That is why excessive precipitation in case of intensive winter rainfall often exceeded the capacity of ditches to swiftly transport the water and the Katavothra to swallow it.

The publication of Pausanias (120–180 AD), handed down in Hellenistic Greek (Ελλάδος περιήγησις), also available in German (Beschreibung Griechenlands) and English translation (Description of Greece), describes in Book 8, Arcadia, and explicitly also Argon Pedion.

Pausanias' time obviously had a basic knowledge of the hydrology of the untilled plain and the re-emergence of the water in the submarine spring Kiveri in the continental shelf of the Argolic Gulf.

The ancient Portitsa-Pass is an impressive human-made monument: A 6 m deep incision in the rock at the mountain crest, with 3 m, broad enough to give way to a wagon, of which rests of wheel tracks were discovered[14] The descent on Pausanias' Ladder in ancient times was a zigzag wagon driveway, of which the historical upper section still exists.

Arcadia, the "Country of the Shepherds" inspired Italian poetry (Poesia bucolic) and became a very important literary genre.

The leading painter Nicolas Poussin, French, but living in Rome, had a lasting impression not only on the baroque epoch of art.