New map reveals lost roads of the Roman Empire
4 days ago
- #Digital Mapping
- #Roman Roads
- #Archaeology
- The Via Appia, constructed starting in 312 B.C.E., is the oldest and best-known road of the Roman Empire, known as the Queen of Long-Distance Roads.
- A new high-resolution digital map reveals the Roman road network's total length was about 300,000 kilometers in the second century C.E., nearly double previous estimates, but only 2.7% of its precise locations are known.
- Romans integrated existing local road systems into the first continent-scale network, connecting regions from Morocco to the Danube, with roads not all leading to Rome.
- Milestones, used as ancient GPS markers and propaganda, along with digitization of databases containing over 8,000 milestone locations, helped in mapping roads.
- Historical satellite photography and topographic maps, like French military maps from the interbellum period, revealed lost roads destroyed by dams or urbanization.
- Detailed mapping considering topography, such as mountain passes, extended the known network by 111,000 kilometers, showing the importance of terrain complexities.
- Paleogeography and landscape reconstructions, like in the Dutch river deltas, aided in locating roads in changing environments.
- Excavation challenges mean more is known about settlements than connecting roads, with many areas, like Baetica in Spain, lacking known road connections despite dense occupation.
- A confidence map in the online atlas Itiner-e charts reliability of sources, guiding future searches for tens of thousands of kilometers of undiscovered Roman roads.