Roman road builders
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They were busy bees.
A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark, Queen Mary University of London and other European institutions analyzed a data set representing almost 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) of Roman roads across the former empire, creating the most detailed quantitative picture yet of how the Roman road network was structured.
Testing an imperial network
The study, published in Nature Communications on Sept. 15, challenges the idea that roads of the empire were uniformly straight and the famous saying that "all roads lead to Rome." The analysis draws on "Itiner-e, The Digital Atlas of Ancient Roads" and applies network centrality, a method for measuring how important a given point is to overall connectivity, to model the empire's road system.
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It says a lot about the vastness of the Roman Empire that we are still doing this work. After two thousand years (give or take), and after centuries of archaeologists working on ancient Rome, we didn't already have a sense of their roads and how the network of them was structured?
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I saw an historian's video the other saying it's a myth that the Romans didn't cross Hadrian's Wall. If his scholarship is reviewed, legitimate, etc., some did cross over, married Scottish women, etc.
To be clear, he also said incursions were made, settlements were held, etc.
I'm looking into this but I believe these events would have been inevitable.
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@mary-anna How often I miss Muffin's sister's posts, and how often I wished Muffin was still posting.
Hope your kids are well.
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@mary-anna
Seems it's a review of everything we've found so far. In the UK many of our modern roads are on or follow the roman roads, or drovers roads. We live within 100 yards of one that is partly under tarmac(and was excavated by archaeologists), then continues as a farmers muddy track.
@Daniel
Yes the Romans were in Scotland
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It's interesting how routes have changed. In England the lowlands were marshy and also filled with trees, so often avoided. People travelled on higher ground and along hilltops where there was drier land and meadow. They also lived on higher ground that could be farmed and defended.
Now our roads (like those of the Romans which we tend to build upon) are generally built to follow land that is flat, lowland, and often a river valley. The natural vegetation is mostly gone or changed over the centuries. We mostly live in valleys and lowland.
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I saw an historian's video the other saying it's a myth that the Romans didn't cross Hadrian's Wall. If his scholarship is reviewed, legitimate, etc., some did cross over, married Scottish women, etc.
To be clear, he also said incursions were made, settlements were held, etc.
I'm looking into this but I believe these events would have been inevitable.
@Daniel Muffin is doing well. Now that we live so close (an hour by car, two hours by train/subway), we can see each other frequently. Last week, we met in Midtown for dinner and to see the re-release of Star Trek IV. It was great fun.
Muffin's brother and sister are deep into the kids/job/house stage of adulthood, but we're able to see each other a few times a year. Muffin's Brother's daughter (Did I call name her Cupcake?) spent most of the summer with us, which was delightful. The others are jockeying for their chance to come to Camp Mimi. Muffin's Sister's firstborn started as Arizona State last month.
My, how time flies. Thanks for asking!
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