Ancient road systems, the earliest of which date to the Neolithic, are feats of engineering that represent a wide range of uses and considerations.
Street in Pompeii, photo by Guillen Perez
Road systems could have been built primarily for maintaining trade, like the Silk Road; or for building and maintaining great empires, like the Inca, Persians and Romans; or for ritual pathways like the Nazca lines, the Inca Ceque system and the great Chaco Road. Or all of those purposes at once. Fascinating! To feed my personal fascination, I've compiled information on several of the most interesting roads, trails, pathways and highways in our collective histories over the past six thousand years. Here is a collection of the specific ways in which some past cultures moved along the countryside.
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