To Fetch a Jug of Water 1200 Years Ago

In March, Marshall Pura of Los Feliz stopped in the village of Abhaneri, India, and came across this little-known wonder from the ancient world -- a well from the 8th century. "The step well was nearly 10 stories deep, and I pictured the women carrying those large jugs down and up those 110 steps more than 1,200 years ago," he said in an e-mail to the Times. "It was completely unexpected, all these arrangements of steps going every which way." He used a Kodak Z740 to plumb the depths.