 In 1992 a party of French academics attended a condensed matter conference in Ukraine where physicist Daniel Beysens introduced them to the story of how ancient Theodosia was supplied with water from dew condensers . They were sufficiently intrigued that in 1993 they went to see for themselves . They concluded that the mounds that Zibold identified as dew condensers were in fact ancient burial mounds ( a part of the necropolis of antic Theodosia ) and that the pipes were medieval in origin and not associated with the mounds . They found the remains of Zibold 's condenser , which they tidied up and examined closely . Zibold 's condenser had apparently performed reasonably well , but in fact his exact results are not at all clear , and it is possible that the collector was intercepting fog , which added significantly to the yield . If Zibold 's condenser worked at all , this was probably due to fact that a few stones near the surface of the mound were able to lose heat at night while being thermally isolated from the ground ; however , it could never have produced the yield that Zibold envisaged . 
