Elemental Water was the combination of the qualities of "wet" and "cold," and possessed "heaviness," which moved it downwards. It was situated between Earth and Air in the cosmos. Water is depicted here as a woman wearing a blue dress that resembles a wave; she is adorned with a necklace made of seashells. Her hair flows like liquid as three fish swim around her. The element of water is often associated with healing and purification in literature and myth. Settled agriculture began in several river valleys, and was always obsessed with water. Nomadic cultures lived and sailed on the sea, island hopping, or on land and desert, where they constantly searched for, or sought respite at oases. Of all the elements, the solid-liquid-gas phase changes of water are most easily observable in daily life, making it an obvious early choice for the fundamental substance of which everything is made. Only with the chemical revolution of Lavoisier and others did water yield its elemental status. In the summer of 1783, Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre Simon de Laplace presented to the French Académie des Sciences a paper entitled "Memoir on heat." They announced that they had burned "inflammable air" (hydrogen) and "vital air" (oxygen) together to form water. Therefore, they declared, water was not a basic element, as natural philosophers had thought since antiquity, but a combination of two gases. The theory of traditional elements gave way to a new experimental tradition.
