The Long History of Roads
“All roads lead to Rome,” insisted one medieval European proverb. (In other parts of the world, roads led elsewhere.) While Roman roads may be the most famous for their longevity and scale, they were far from the first road network. Explore the history of roads and the related terms below. Then, consider some of the most famous roads in the world both today and in ancient times.
- macadam | pavement | asphalt | corduroy road | gallery road
- holloway | ridgeway | milestones | trackway
Britain's oldest road is a chalk ridge walked for five thousand years. Rome's are two thousand years old and still under traffic. Neither was built the way you'd guess.
Key concepts
- Camber
- The slight arch built into a road's cross-section so that rain runs off to the sides instead of standing on it. Water, not weight, is what destroys a surface, so the camber is the single feature that separates a road from a rut.
- Way Station
- Roman roads came with a support system: forts and inns spaced about a day apart where a traveller could sleep, shelter from a sandstorm, or swap a tired animal for a fresh one.
Every work — at a glance
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Fifty to eighty thousand kilometres of layered, cambered, famously straight highway, built by the army to move the army — with trade, mail and Christianity travelling as a side effect.
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Not a road and not silk: a shifting network of relays linking China to the Mediterranean, which moved paper and printing west, Buddhism east, and the Black Death both ways.
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Trackway
The oldest kind of road — a route worn in by use, and where the ground was marsh, engineered: the Somerset Sweet Track is dated by tree rings to 3807 BC.
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Ridgeway
A track along a ridge crest, because the tops are dry and open while prehistoric valleys were wooded and boggy. England's Ridgeway has been walked for roughly 5,000 years.
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Holloway
A 'hollow way' — a lane worn metres below the surrounding fields by feet, hooves and rain over centuries, until the track is a green tunnel between banks.
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Corduroy Road
Logs laid crosswise over swamp so a wagon can cross — ribbed like corduroy cloth, brutal to ride, and rotting from the day it is built.
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Gallery Road
A road cut as a shelf into a cliff face with rock left overhead, for places with no ground to build on — Switzerland's Axenstrasse is the classic.
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Macadam — John Loudon McAdam
John McAdam's layered crushed-stone surface, about 1820: no heavy foundation, just small angular stone kept dry by a camber. Add tar and it becomes tarmac.
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Pavement
From the Latin for a beaten floor — to an engineer, the whole layered structure that spreads a wheel's load, not the black skin on top of it.
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Asphalt
Crushed stone bound with bitumen, the residue left when crude oil is refined. Flexible where concrete cracks, and millable and reusable when it wears out.
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Roman stone columns counting distance in thousand-pace miles, inscribed with the emperor who paid — measured from the Golden Milestone Augustus set up in the Forum.
What to know
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01
A road is a job, not a surface. The Romans counted a paved highway and a marked desert camel path as the same kind of thing, because both were maintained connections with way stations along them — so the question to ask about any route is what it does, not what it is made of.
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02
What a road carries outruns what it was built for. Rome laid its network for legions and got trade, mail and Christianity; the Silk Road moved paper west and Buddhism east and the plague along with them. A channel does not choose its cargo.
Across subjects
Theme connection
Practice
Check what you've read
Pick the best answer — you'll see why each option is right or wrong.
Question 1 of 2
HISWhat is the name for the crushed-stone road surface pioneered by John McAdam?
Question 2 of 2
HISSomeone who believes Rome's roads still shape modern Europe would point to —