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History

Roads of antiquity
Ancient roads of the Mediterranean and Middle East
The first roads were paths made by animals and later adapted by humans. The earliest records of
such paths have been found around some springs near Jericho and date from about 6000 BC. The
first indications of constructed roads date from about 4000 BC and consist of stone-paved streets at
Ur in modern-day Iraq and timber roads preserved in a swamp in Glastonbury, England. During the
Bronze Age, the availability of metal tools made the construction of stone paving more feasible; at
the same time, demand for paved roads rose with the use of wheeled vehicles, which were well
established by 2000 BC.
Cretan stone roads
At about this time the Minoans on the island of Crete built a 30-mile (50-kilometre) road from
Gortyna on the south coast over the mountains at an elevation of about 4,300 feet (1,300 meters) to
Knossos on the north coast. Constructed of layers of stone, the roadway took account of the necessity
of drainage by a crown throughout its length and even gutters along certain sections. The pavement,
which was about 12 feet (360 centimeters) wide, consisted of sandstone bound by a clay-gypsum
mortar. The surface of the central portion consisted of two rows of basalt slabs 2 inches (50
millimeters) thick. The center of the roadway seems to have been used for foot traffic and the edges
for animals and carts. It is the oldest existing paved road.
Roads of Persia and Babylon
The earliest long-distance road was a 1,500-mile route between the Persian Gulf and the
Mediterranean Sea. It came into some use about 3500 BC, but it was operated in an organized way
only from about 1200 BC by the Assyrians, who used it to join Susa, near the Persian Gulf, to the
Mediterranean ports of Smyrna (İzmir) and Ephesus. More a track than a constructed road, the route
was duplicated between 550 and 486 BC by the great Persian kings Cyrus IIand Darius I in their
famous Royal Road. Like its predecessor, the Persian Royal Road began at Susa, wound
northwestward to Arbela, and thence proceeded westward through Nineveh to Harran, a major road
junction and caravan center. The main road then continued to twin termini at Smyrna and Ephesus.
The Greek historian Herodotus, writing about 475 BC, put the time for the journey from Susa to
Ephesus at 93 days, although royal riders traversed the route in 20 days.
In Babylon about 615 BC the Chaldeans connected the city’s temples to the royal palaces with the
Processional Way, a major road in which burned bricks and carefully shaped stones were laid in
bituminous mortar.
Egypt
Herodotus credits the Egyptians with building their first roads to provide a solid track upon which to
haul the immense limestone blocks used in the pyramids, and archaeological evidence indicates that
such road building took place southwest of Cairo between 2600 and 2200 BC. The wheel arrived in
Egypt at the relatively late date of about 1600 BC. There is little evidence of street surfacing in
ancient Egyptian towns, though there is evidence of the use of paved processional roads leading to
the temples. The ancient travel routes of Egypt ran from Thebes and Coptos on the central Nile east
to the Red Sea and from Memphis (Cairo) across the land bridge to Asia Minor.
Greece
The early Greeks depended primarily on sea travel. There is evidence of the building of special roads
for religious purposes and transport about 800 BC, but there is little evidence of substantial road
building for travel and transport prior to the Roman system. The Greeks did build a few ceremonials,
or “sacred,” roads, paved with shaped stone and containing wheel ruts about 55 inches (140
centimeters) apart.
Ancient roads of Europe
The Amber Routes
During the 2nd millennium BC, trade ways developed in Europe. One route, for example, ran
between Italy and Spain via Marseille and nearby Heraclea, close to present-day Avignon, France.
Such ways were used for the movement of flints from Denmark, freestone from Belgium, salt from
Austria, lead and tin from England, and amber from northern Europe. By about 1500 BC many of the
ways in eastern and central Europe had linked together into an extensive trading network known as
the Amber Routes. Four routes have been identified, the first from modern Hamburg, Germany,
southwestward by dual routes through Cologne and Frankfurt to Lyon and Marseille. The second
also passed from Hamburg south to Passau on the Danube and then through the Brenner Pass to
Venice. The third began at Samland on the East Prussian coast (where amber is still found), crossed
the Vistula River at Thorn, and thence continued southeastward through the Moravian Gate to
Aquileia on the Adriatic. The fourth, the Baltic-Pontus road, followed the main eastern rivers, the
Vistula, Saw, Sereth, Prut, Bug, and Dnieper.
The Roman roads
The greatest systematic road builders of the ancient world were the Romans, who were very
conscious of the military, economic, and administrative advantages of a good road system. The
typical Roman road was bold in conception and construction. Where possible, it was built in a
straight line from one sighting point to the next, regardless of obstacles, and was carried over
marshes, lakes, ravines, and mountains. In its highest stage of development, it was constructed by
excavating parallel trenches about 40 feet apart to provide longitudinal drainage—a hallmark of
Roman road engineering. The foundation was then raised about three feet above ground level,
employing material taken from the drains and from the adjacent cleared ground. As the importance
of the road increased, this embankment was progressively covered with a light bedding of sand or
mortar on which four main courses were constructed: the statumen layer 10 to 24 inches (250 to 600
millimeters) thick, composed of stones at least 2 inches in size, the raudus, a 9-inch-thick layer of
concrete made from stones under 2 inches in size, the nucleus layer, about 12 inches thick, using
concrete made from small gravel and coarse sand, and, for very important roads, the summum
dorsum, a wearing surface of large stone slabs at least 6 inches deep. The total thickness thus varied
from 3 to 6 feet. The width of the Appian Way in its ultimate development was 35 feet. The two-
way, heavily crowned central carriageway was 15 feet wide. On each side it was flanked by curbs 2
feet wide and 18 inches high and paralleled by one-way side lanes 7 feet wide.
Ancient roads of South and East Asia
India
The Indus civilization in Sindh, Balochistān, and the Punjab probably flourished in the period 3250–
2750 BC. Excavations indicate that the cities of this civilization paved their major streets with
burned bricks cemented with bitumen. Great attention was devoted to drainage. The houses had
drainpipes that carried the water to a street drain in the centre of the street, two to four feet deep and
covered with slabs or bricks.
Evidence from archaeological and historical sources indicates that by AD 75 several methods of road
construction were known in India. These included the brick pavement, the stone slab pavement, a
kind of concrete as a foundation course or as an actual road surface, and the principles of grouting
(filling crevices) with gypsum, lime, or bituminous mortar. Street paving seems to have been
common in the towns in India at the beginning of the Common Era, and the principles of drainage
were well known. The crowning of the roadway and the use of ditches and gutters were common in
the towns. Northern and western India in the period 300 to 150 BC had a network of well-built roads.
The rulers of the Mauryan empire (4th century BC), which stretched from the Indus River to the
Brahmaputra River and from the Himalayas to the Vindhya Range, generally recognized that the
unity of a great empire depended on the quality of its roads. The Great Royal Road of the Mauryans
began at the Himalayan border, ran through Taxila (near modern Rāwalpindi, Pakistan), crossed the
five streams of the Punjab, proceeded by way of Jumna to Prayag (now Allahābād, India), and
continued to the mouth of the Ganges River.
China’s Imperial Highway
China had a road system that paralleled the Persian Royal Road and the Roman road network in time
and purpose. Its major development began under Emperor Shihuangdi about 220 BC. Many of the
roads were wide, surfaced with stone, and lined with trees; steep mountains were traversed by stone-
paved stairways with broad treads and low steps. By AD 700 the network had grown to some 25,000
miles (about 40,000 kilometers). Traces of a key route near Xi’an are still visible.
The Silk Road
The trade route from China to Asia Minor and India, known as the Silk Road, had been in existence
for 1,400 years at the time of Marco Polo’s travels (c. AD1270–90). It came into partial existence
about 300 BC, when it was used to bring jade from Khotan (modern Hotan, China) to China. By 200
BC it was linked to the West, and by 100 BC it was carrying active trade between the two
civilizations. At its zenith in AD 200 this road and its western connections over the Roman system
constituted the longest road on Earth. In Asia the road passed through Samarkand to the region of
Fergana, where, near the city of Osh, a stone tower marked the symbolic watershed between East and
West. From Fergana the road traversed the valley between the Tien Shanand Kunlun Mountains
through Kashgar, where it divided and skirted both sides of the Takla Makan Desert to join again at
Yuanquan. The road then wound eastward to Jiayuguan (Suzhou), where it passed through the
westernmost gateway (the Jade Gate, or Yumen) of the Great Wall of China. It then went southeast
on the Imperial Highway to Xi’an and eastward to Shanghai on the Pacific Ocean. From Kashgar,
trade routes to the south passed over the mountains to the great trading centre of Bactria and to
northern Kashmir.
The Middle Ages
Europe and Asia
At the zenith of the Roman Empire, overland trade joined the cultures of Europe, North Africa, Asia
Minor, China, and India. But the system of road transport was dependent on the Roman, Chinese,
and Mauryan empires, and, as these great empires declined in the early Christian era, the trade routes
became routes of invasion. Except in the Byzantine Empire, road networks fell into centuries of
disrepair. Transport relied on pack trains, which could negotiate the badly maintained roads and
sufficed to carry the reduced stream of commerce.
The first signs of a road revival came during the reign of Charlemagne late in the 8th century. In the
9th century the Moors established an extensive street network in Córdoba, Spain. The Vikings
operated the Varangian Road, a major trade route linking the Baltic and the Middle East via Russia.
Further road revival was aided first by the need to service the regular round of trade fairs and then, in
the 11th century, by a centralization of power and an increase in religious fervour.
Eventually a commercial revival set in. By the 12th century old cities were reviving, and new ones
were being built, especially in western Europe. Street paving became a reputable artisan activity, and
by the 15th century well-maintained roads bringing food to the cities from their hinterlands were of
critical importance.
Inca roads of South America
Across the Atlantic, the period witnessed the rise of another notable road-building empire, that of the
Incas. The Inca road system extended from Quito, Ecuador, through Cuzco, Peru, and as far south as
Santiago, Chile. It included two parallel roadways, one along the coast about 2,250 miles in length,
the other following the Andes about 3,400 miles in length with a number of cross connections. At its
zenith, when the Spaniards arrived early in the 16th century, a network of some 14,000 miles of road
served an area of about 750,000 square miles (1,940,000 square kilometres) in which lived nearly 10
million people. The network was praised by 16th-century explorers as superior to that in
contemporary Europe.
The master road builders
In Europe, gradual technological improvements in the 17th and 18th centuries saw increased
commercial travel, improved vehicles, and the breeding of better horses. These factors created an
incessant demand for better roads, and supply and invention both rose to meet that demand. In 1585
the Italian engineer Guido Toglietta wrote a thoughtful treatise on a pavement system using broken
stone that represented a marked advance on the heavy Roman style. In 1607 Thomas Procter
published the first English-language book on roads. The first highway engineering school in Europe,
the School of Bridges and Highways, was founded in Paris in 1747. Late in the 18th century the
Scottish political economist Adam Smith, in discussing conditions in England, wrote,
Trésaguet
In France, Pierre-Marie-Jérôme Trésaguet, an engineer from an engineering family, became in 1764
engineer of bridges and roads at Limoges and in 1775 inspector general of roads and bridges for
France. In that year he developed an entirely new type of relatively light road surface, based on the
theory that the underlying natural formation, rather than the pavement, should support the load. His
standard cross section was 18 feet wide and consisted of an eight-inch-thick course of uniform
foundation stones laid edgewise on the natural formation and covered by a two-inch layer of walnut-
sized broken stone. This second layer was topped with a one-inch layer of smaller gravel or broken
stone. In order to maintain surface levels, Trésaguet’s pavement was placed in an excavated trench—
a technique that made drainage a difficult problem.
Telford
Thomas Telford, born of poor parents in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1757, was apprenticed to a
stone mason. Intelligent and ambitious, Telford progressed to designing bridges and building roads.
He placed great emphasis on two features: maintaining a level roadway with a maximum gradient of
1 in 30 and building a stone surface capable of carrying the heaviest anticipated loads. His roadways
were 18 feet wide and built in three courses: a lower layer, seven inches thick, consisting of good-
quality foundation stone carefully placed by hand (this was known as the Telford base), a middle
layer, also seven inches thick, consisting of broken stone of two-inch maximum size, and a top layer
of gravel or broken stone up to one inch thick.
McAdam
The greatest advance came from John Loudon McAdam, born in 1756 at Ayr in Scotland. McAdam
began his road-building career in 1787 but reached major heights after 1804, when he was appointed
general surveyor for Bristol, then the most important port city in England. The roads leading to
Bristol were in poor condition, and in 1816 McAdam took control of the Bristol Turnpike. There he
showed that traffic could be supported by a relatively thin layer of small, single-sized, angular pieces
of broken stone placed and compacted on a well-drained natural formation and covered by an
impermeable surface of smaller stones.
Drainage was essential to the success of McAdam’s method, and he required the pavement to be
elevated above the surrounding surface. The structural layer of broken stone (as shown in the figure,
bottom) was eight inches thick and used stone of two to three inches maximum size laid in layers and
compacted by traffic—a process adequate for the traffic of the time. The top layer was two inches
thick, using three-fourths- to one-inch stone to fill surface voids between the large stones.
New paving materials
When urban street paving became widespread in the latter half of the 19th century, the common
paving materials were hoof-sized stone blocks, similarly sized wooden blocks, bricks, McAdam’s
broken stone, and occasionally asphalt and concrete. McAdam’s broken stone provided the cheapest
pavement, but its unbound surface was difficult to maintain and was usually either slimy or dusty as
a consequence of water, weather, and copious amounts of horse excrement. Thus, roads at the turn of
the 20th century were largely inadequate for the demands about to be placed on them by the
automobile and truck. As vehicle speeds increased rapidly, the available friction between road and
tire became critical for accelerating, braking, and cornering. In addition, numerous pavement failures
made it obvious that much stronger and tougher materials were required. The result was an ongoing
search for a better pavement. Asphalt and concrete both offered promise.
Asphalt is a mixture of bitumen and stone, and concrete is a mixture of cement and stone. Asphalt
footpaths were first laid in Paris in 1810, but the method was not perfected until after 1835. The first
road use of asphalt occurred in 1824, when asphalt blocks were placed on the Champs-Élyséesin
Paris, but the first successful major application was made in 1858 on the nearby rue Saint-Honoré.
The first successful concrete pavement was built in Inverness, Scotland, in 1865. Neither technology,
however, advanced far without the pressures of the car, and they both required the availability of
powerful stone-crushing, mixing, and spreading equipment.
The impetus for the development of modern road asphalt came from the United States, which had
few deposits of natural bitumen to draw upon and where engineers were therefore forced to study the
principles behind the behaviour of this material. The first steps came in the 1860s, with the work of
Belgian immigrant Edward de Smedt at Columbia University in New York City. De Smedt
conducted his first tests in New Jersey in 1870 and by 1872 was producing the equivalent of a
modern “well-graded” maximum-density asphalt. The first applications were in Battery Park and on
Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1872. De Smedt went to Washington, D.C., in 1876 as part of
President Ulysses S. Grant’s desire to make that town “a Capital City worthy of a great Nation.”
Grant had appointed a commission to oversee road making, and it conducted its first trials on
Pennsylvania Avenue in 1877. Sixty percent of the trials used de Smedt’s new product and were
great successes.
The first modern concrete roads were produced by Joseph Mitchell, a follower of Telford, who
conducted three successful trials in England and Scotland in 1865–66. Like asphalt technology,
concrete road building was largely developed by the turn of the 20th century and was restricted more
by the available machinery than by the material. Problems were also encountered in producing a
surface that could match the performance of the surface produced almost accidentally by hot-rolled
asphalt. For the following century the two materials remained in intense competition, both offering a
similar product at a similar cost, and there was little evidence that one would move far ahead of the
other as they continued on their paths of gradual improvement. (The principles of modern pavement
design are described below in Pavement.)
The Modern Road
Road engineering
Since the beginning of the 20th century, as the automobile and truck have offered ever higher levels
of mobility, vehicle ownership per head of population has increased. Road needs have been strongly
influenced by this popularity and also by the mass movement of people to cities and thence to
suburban fringes—a trend that has led to increasing travel needs and road congestion and to low-
density cities, which are difficult to service by public transport. Often the building of new roads to
alleviate such problems has encouraged further urban sprawl and yet more road travel. Long-term
solutions require the provision of alternatives to car and truck transport, controls over land use, and
the proper pricing of road travel. To this end, road managers must be concerned not merely with
lines on maps but also with the number, type, speed, and loading of individual vehicles, the safety,
comfort, and convenience of the traveling public, and the health and welfare of bystanders and
adjoining property owners.

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