Complex sentence: Building a navigational canal across the continent was well beyond the formal knowledge of the military engineers expected to supervise it, but the peasant women who were carriers of classical hydraulic methods added to the repertoire of available techniques.
Split into simpler sentences: Building a navigational canal across the continent was well beyond the formal knowledge of the military engineers expected to supervise it. But the peasant women who were carriers of classical hydraulic methods, added to the repertoire of available techniques.