Ancient Engineering – Yellow Dragon Cave Water Mill

Wooden waterwheel in front of Huanglong Cave (Yellow Dragon Cave) is a karst cave located near the Wulingyuan District of Zhangjiajie City, Hunan, China.

“Turns out the area that these wheels were traditionally in was flooded as part of the 3 gorges dam, so this is a reconstruction for people to see what they would have looked like.” -comment on Reddit

Everything ancient in China is almost always a reproduction, including this. It’s an elaborate kinetic sculpture – the water mill doesn’t appear to mill anything. China lets you look around the cave a bit on Google Maps street view: 29°22’1.62″N 110°36’47.79″E

[Video found here; a longer version without music here.]