[HN Gopher] Roman Roads (2017)
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Roman Roads (2017)
Author : gslin
Score : 298 points
Date : 2024-06-06 13:32 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sashamaps.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (sashamaps.net)
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| That's really well done! I have no comment on the accuracy but it
| really highlights just how the Romans integrated new areas into
| the central empire through transportation (goods, ideas, and
| armies).
|
| I will also call out the road in Africa called "Caeserea lol"
| bdw5204 wrote:
| That would presumably be the city of Caesarea in Mauretania[0]
| which was the capital of that province. According to the
| Wikipedia article for the modern town at that site[1], it was
| also called Iol in ancient times.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarea_in_Mauretania
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherchell
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| The ego! It should have been called Via Scipio Africanus
| Motherforker
| supermatou wrote:
| Much better resolution:
|
| https://video-images.vice.com/articles/593594e8c270a8484d1d1...
| nerdponx wrote:
| The original creator's page is:
| https://sashamaps.net/docs/maps/roman-roads-original/
|
| The summary here links right to the original content. I just
| wanted to highlight the original for the sake of other readers
| clicking through quickly. There's also a much more detailed (and
| more interesting) writeup on the creator's page.
| ydnaclementine wrote:
| Their other maps are sick too. Is there a term for these types
| of visualizations, where some data is visualized in a "non-
| standard" way in the context of the data?
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I actually refer to his list of 20 simple, distinct colors
| (https://sashamaps.net/docs/resources/20-colors/) which he came
| up with for this map, pretty frequently. It's a nice palette.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| An easy trick is to rotate hue with a spacing of 1.618. That
| guarantees maximum separation with no near collisions for any
| number of hues.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I've heard this one before. It only takes advantage of one
| dimension of the color space, though, and that bugs me. On
| the other hand you don't have to go look up a better
| palette.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Here's a 2-dimensional version where you pick the angles
| https://observablehq.com/@jrus/categorical
|
| If you want to keep the points theoretically ideally
| separated out to as many as colors as you want, you can
| use the "plastic sequence" for your parameters,
| https://observablehq.com/@jrus/plastic-sequence
| wonger_ wrote:
| So cool! The same "golden angle" is behind plant leaf
| spacing, for minimal overlap / maximum exposure to
| sunlight.
|
| https://gofiguremath.org/natures-favorite-math/the-golden-
| ra...
| bloopernova wrote:
| Oh that is a nice page, I really like the accessibility
| options to support 95, 99, 99.99, and 100% of people. Thank
| you for sharing it.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| There's also an option to email the mapmaker to receive a pdf.
| I'm going to ask for one in hopes that it'll blow up nicely. I
| think it'd make interesting wall art.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we changed the URL to that from
| https://www.openculture.com/2024/06/the-roads-of-ancient-
| rom.... Thanks!
| metabagel wrote:
| LOL, Pompeii (closed)
| moi2388 wrote:
| How can it take 2 months on foot, yet only 1 month per horse,
| when a horse can only travel between 25-35 miles a day, which is
| not twice as far as a human can travel in a day, but about equal?
| bedobi wrote:
| I'm sure the author would have more details on the ambiguity.
| Are the walkers marching soldiers? Is the rider a courier who
| changes to fresh horses at waystations? It's not clear :)
| mavhc wrote:
| Relay horses
| nescioquid wrote:
| My thought is that one didn't simply travel alone on horseback,
| but with a group and baggage, and I wouldn't expect servants to
| be mounted. The animals help with the baggage. You also would
| want a group since there are highwaymen and freebooters on the
| road.
|
| I seem to recall oxen speed being about 12 miles per day.
| eschulz wrote:
| Horses would often be swapped out at stations when a wealthy
| person would have to travel very quickly across a long
| distance. Maybe this is an average since the speed with which
| horsemen could travel would depend on the rate at which they
| exchanged their horses.
|
| In an extreme example from the year 9 BC, the future emperor
| Tiberius traveled on the Roman Roads 330 miles (531 km) between
| northern Italy and modern day Mainz, Germany in 36 hours
| without sleep. He was rushing to the deathbed of his older
| brother Drusus after the latter suffered mortal injuries in a
| freak horse accident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drususstein
| Phenomenit wrote:
| So he rode really fast, reckless and sleep deprived to his
| brother who'd been injured in a horse riding accident?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| People never change.
| eschulz wrote:
| haha hadn't thought about that, although the Roman Roads
| could be considered to be a safe highways as opposed to the
| dangerous paths in Germania.
|
| If one of the main characters in The Fast and the Furious
| gets hurt in a street race, would not his teammates race to
| him as fast as they could?
| hammock wrote:
| With baggage, a typical human can only travel about 12-17 miles
| a day (half that of a horse)
| wongarsu wrote:
| About 30km/18 miles per day is a common value used in Europe.
| On a single day you can easily do twice that if you don't
| carry too much and are used to walking long distances, but it
| would be difficult to sustain. Also the number allows for
| time to set up camp (and tear it down in the morning),
| prepare meals, etc.
| xandrius wrote:
| Saying that 60km "can be easily done" is quite a stretch.
| After 30-40km, even on flat, most people wouldn't do it
| easily at all.
|
| And I walk about 10km daily in one session and often do
| 30+km hikes.
| reaperducer wrote:
| When I was in elementary school, we would do charity
| walks every year to raise money for the poor. They were
| 20 miles.
|
| It took us all day, but if a bunch of kids between fourth
| and eighth grades and their nun teachers can do it, I'm
| surprised how many adults on this web site think it's too
| far.
| hammock wrote:
| Did you do it with a suitcase of stuff for a week- or
| month-long stay in another city, and contingencies like
| extra water, food, stove etc if you get laid over in a
| remote area without facilties? Did you do it rain or
| shine, on paved roads or muddy rutted-out dirt roads?
| xandrius wrote:
| Was it nicely paved and mostly flat? And how did you feel
| at the end of it? Would you do it again the next day?
| reaperducer wrote:
| Mostly paved, but absolutely not flat. Some of the hills
| I wouldn't tackle on my bicycle.
| chewz wrote:
| When I was a boy scout (so 16 -18 yo) we were walking as
| a team 50-70 km per day and could sustain that for 2-3
| days. More perhaps, but there was nowhere to go any
| further. We were wearing 20 kg in rather uncomfortable
| backpacks.
|
| On forced marches we could keep 7-8 km/h speed. And
| sometime we have practiced legionary walk which is
| alternating 200 steps jogging and 700 steps walking.
|
| One of the badges was for walking 100 km in a day and lot
| of my friends got it.
|
| But back then we were generally walking a lot, day by
| day, every year.
|
| Good shoes and good motivation.
|
| I am not doing this anymore.
| mikhailfranco wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon
|
| A man on a bike beats a horse over almost all distances,
| especially long distances. The only interesting competitive
| distance might be a flying 400m.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It took 4 years after the addition of mountain bikes for a
| cyclist to beat the horse at the Llanwyrtd Wells event.
|
| Also, AFAIK, the Romans did not have bicycles.
|
| ps. I raced this event twice in the early 1980s when they had
| a mountain bike division, and still have scars on my right
| arm from one of them.
| ssl232 wrote:
| Related: https://orbis.stanford.edu/
| rippeltippel wrote:
| There's a missing road in Sardinia that I'm aware of, connecting
| Karalis (today's Cagliari) with Turris Libisonis (today's Porto
| Torres, near Sassari).
| dewey wrote:
| This is mentioned in the ,,Creative liberties taken" section.
| It's not a complete map.
| fabi0 wrote:
| Omnes viae Romam ducunt.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| > Omnes viae Romam ducunt
|
| Hinc illuc pervenire non potes.
| arktos_ wrote:
| Itidem mihi, nobis ergo sunt naves longae navigandae
| zabzonk wrote:
| caesar ad sum jam fortea
|
| brutus ad sum too
|
| caesar sic in omnibus
|
| brutus sic in hat
| BlueUmarell wrote:
| Quid narras?
| behnamoh wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder if we've regressed in terms of attention to
| quality. Here in the US, I see lots of potholes on the streets
| and sidewalks. Meanwhile, the ancient cobblestone roads are still
| functional to this day.
| TimedToasts wrote:
| Drive a semi over those cobblestones daily for a year and we'll
| see how they are doing.
| trgn wrote:
| For sure, but unfair comparison. Leave an asphalt road
| unattended for 10 years and it's cracked and overgrown,
| barely better than a dirtroad. A cobblestone at least will be
| salvageable, just will need a good weed wacking. Baseline
| quality is just higher.
| bluGill wrote:
| Potholes are not regression. They are a good cost effect
| response. We can build roads that won't have potholes, but at
| vastly more cost, it is better in the long run to build roads
| as we do and then fix potholes every year.
|
| Cobblestones also get potholes and the like when subject to
| heavy car traffic.
| marssaxman wrote:
| The neighbors on my block share a gravel alleyway, which
| develops enormous potholes over time. The city does not
| maintain it, so we all chip in every couple of years to have
| it re-graded. One of our neighbors, who happens to own a few
| expensive sports cars, wants us to have the alley paved with
| asphalt instead: but it will take twenty years of regrading
| before the project would break even.
| more_corn wrote:
| Watch a video on roman road construction methods. It seems they
| prided themselves on building for the long term. Retrieval
| augmented generation from incomplete archive: The foundation of
| the road consists of 3' of gravel covered with 2' of sand
| forming an extremely stable base. I seem to also recall that
| builders got paid half upon completion and half if the
| construction was still in good condition fifty years later.
| (Though this is probably apocryphal for the obvious reasons)
| palata wrote:
| > Sometimes I wonder if we've regressed in terms of attention
| to quality.
|
| In a way we have, yes! In our modern society we optimize for
| profit. Always, everywhere. The reasons our roads won't last
| thousands of years is precisely that it would be less
| profitable.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| The Roman roads wouldn't be pleasant to drive on at all. Also
| the Romans certainly must have been more obsessed by profit
| than us? They state was built on subjugation and enslavement
| of basically all the people they came into contact with.
| kbolino wrote:
| The Romans hadn't invented the exact forms of the joint-stock
| company and limited-liability corporation yet, but they
| certainly had greed and short-sightedness.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Somebody mentioned semis already, but also, I bet Roman
| engineers would give up immediately if they saw a snowplow.
| colechristensen wrote:
| They used to pour molten iron in holes in their cobblestone
| roads.
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/pompeii-fixed-poth...
| szvsw wrote:
| The network scale, network density, frequency of use, and
| loading conditions are all like, orders of magnitude higher.
| Plus as other commenters have mentioned, weather conditions
| tend to be more extreme than the Mediterranean, and
| additionally, designing for serviceability can have significant
| advantages.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Bad roads are safer. We design our roads to be driven much
| faster than anyone should. Potholes and rough areas slow us
| down
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There are a few studies, with arguable relevancy that
| discovered that roads that are safe but _look_ dangerous are
| safer than merely safe roads.
|
| None of that has any relation at all with potholes. Potholes
| are dangerous and may not be even noticeable at a distance.
| kbolino wrote:
| Controlled-access freeways (interstates, motorways,
| autobahns) have much lower accident rates per mile than other
| roads with lower speed limits and more distractions.
|
| Of course, the two broad categories of road largely serve
| different purposes, so one can't go around replacing side
| streets with freeways, either.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Cars are the problem.
|
| And just FYI roman roads were maintained. We dont have
| documentation on this from the early imperial period. But from
| the Byzantine period we know that there were local people
| responsible for maintenance.
|
| And we also know that even during Byzantine times many roads
| were reverting to nature. Road maintence was a real problem.
| gtmitchell wrote:
| Rome had the advantage of access to essentially unlimited
| forced labor in order to build and maintain their
| infrastructure. Modern engineering is absolutely superior to
| Roman engineering, but we do have to contend with budget
| constraints, at least in part because we're not using slavery
| to build our roads.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Also the types of roads the Romans were building wouldn't be
| particularly useful or pleasant to use.
| tamimio wrote:
| Wait till you see Canadian roads.. But the real reason is
| construction mafia, to keep their work going, if they made it
| high quality they are out of government maintenance contracts
| in the coming years.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| I've done some research on this.
|
| For one thing, cobblestone roads wouldn't last so long under
| the weight and shear forces of modern vehicles. Y'know when
| Wile E. Coyote skids to a stop so hard that the road under him
| wrinkles up like a rug? A loaded semi truck braking hard can
| actually make asphalt do that, just as an example of the kind
| of forces involved.
|
| For another, cobbles that are even a little bit wet become
| slippery deathtraps at even moderate driving speeds. Even when
| they're dry, highway speeds are going to be very uncomfortably
| bumpy. Hard on people and hardware both.
|
| Basically, a good driving road requires a surface that is
| extremely smooth but also somewhat tacky, and that really
| limits what other properties it can have. You can't build
| something like that out of durable stone.
| vikingerik wrote:
| There is survivor bias to consider: we don't see any ancient
| roads that didn't survive, if it became overgrown from neglect
| or damaged by erosion or water or whatever.
| strnisa wrote:
| Coincidentally, this is also the future hyperloop map.
| anVlad11 wrote:
| I've been always fascinated by subway maps. The best ones are
| usually made manually and require update from contractors on
| every infrastructure extension. Were there any efforts to make
| autogenerated styled subway maps? Not like stylization of OSM
| data, but real schemes that show the whole system without sensory
| overload?
| ygra wrote:
| Some examples of automatic layout in this style:
|
| - M. Nollenburg: Automated Drawings of Metro Maps, 2005. We've
| used that a while ago to render a few pretty images with our
| graph visualization library, but runtime is prohibitive (along
| with the requirement of a fast ILP solver).
|
| - LOOM: https://github.com/ad-freiburg/loom and
| https://loom.cs.uni-freiburg.de/global
| solardev wrote:
| Wow, cool. Thanks for sharing!
|
| I hope someone builds a web version of Mini Metro with this
| on top of OSM.
| Yhippa wrote:
| This is really neat! Thanks for sharing. I wonder if there's an
| analogue for these routes and the roadway system there? I imagine
| so. I thought it was interesting how short Via Appia was.
| Learning Latin growing up, I imagined that to be much longer.
| hammock wrote:
| How does this compare to the modern rail system?
| EGreg wrote:
| I checked and I think they are missing King's Highway:
|
| https://www.audleytravel.com/jordan/country-guides/the-kings...
|
| Was it not Roman enough, ie not built by Romans so not on the
| map? Or did it not exist during Roman times?
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Funny thing is they _did_ have something like this already:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana
|
| (Check out one of the full size scans in the links)
| delichon wrote:
| The subway map is great for seeing the shape of the network,
| but this one is better at showing the geographical constraints
| that shaped the network.
| jajko wrote:
| Very schematic from region I live around - Geneva and Aosta are
| not that far on the map and seem close neighbours, but highest
| part of alps lies in between, passes can be brutal and far apart
| (>=2500m high, ie St Bernard pass from where famous dogs come
| from, can end up snowed anytime all year round and especially
| 2000 years ago, at least 6 months/year unpassable for carriages
| and dangerous for anything else).
| darkwater wrote:
| Well, you know, a subway would pass under the mountains ;)
| busyant wrote:
| Pretty cool.
|
| My parents grew up in small villages that are adjacent to one of
| these ancient roads (via Tiburtina:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Tiburtina) and the road
| basically still exists as a modern road.
|
| I remember driving near Pescara with my parents in the 1990s--
| they had not been back to Italy in 35+ years and they were trying
| to find their way back to their home towns.
|
| We stopped the car on the side of a main road and asked a woman
| who was walking, "Dov'e' la Tiburtina?" (where is the
| Tiburtina?).
|
| The woman responded... "QUEST'E' la Tiburtina!" (This _is_ the
| Tiburtina).
| beerandt wrote:
| Newer but similar thing with Old Spanish Trail through the
| southern US (and similar historic trails).
|
| So many roads named after something or named some nostalgic but
| generic thing, that no one realizes when they are actually
| driving on the modernized version of the real thing.
|
| Among other things, it seems most expect there to be a route 66
| style or (american) rail-row insitu abandoned artifact of these
| roads (which do sometimes exist in stretches of realignment)
| but don't realize that un-abandoned places generally aren't
| going to abandon their roads.
|
| ETA: Old Spanish Trail went from the Atlantic coast of Florida
| to the Pacific along the Gulf Coast then continued west. But
| the places with continuous use to today from Texas east are now
| more often excluded from 'Old Spanish Trail' maps.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| El Camino Real in California is now just another road full of
| strip malls going through Mountain View and Palo Alto.
| brudgers wrote:
| The road retained its name in part of Silicon Valley, but
| the 101 follows the Camino Real as it continues south.
| There are commemorative markers.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| absolutely love this. well done
| ardit33 wrote:
| The Roman Empire was very advanced for the time, and it left such
| a huge imprint on the civilization even centuries, and thousands
| of years after it.
|
| The organization was a different scale.
|
| Fun fact: Some of the most famous battles in England in the
| middle ages, such as battle of Hasting, were basically 5k - 9k
| soldiers in each side. That's just one and a half Roman legion.
|
| Rome, could field 12 legions at a time, and the scale was insane.
| I can see why the Roman Empire remained such a symbol of
| civilization for a thousand of years after its fall.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| To be fair England was a complete backwater in Roman times,
| just like much of Europe away from the Mediterranean. IIRC by
| the 1000s Germany, France and Britain had already well
| surpassed their Roman population peaks, Italy on the other hand
| took another 500 years or so.
| fisian wrote:
| Cool visualization.
|
| From the title I thought it would be this project (called "roads
| to Rome"): https://benedikt-gross.de/projects/roads-to-rome/
| krylon wrote:
| I was about to complain that my hometown is missing, but then
| remembered it didn't exist back then.
| Brosper wrote:
| It's a really cool project and I appreciate it a lot, but how
| it's connected to the Hacker News site?
| phasnox wrote:
| Because it is very intersting knowledge?
| art0rz wrote:
| From the HN guidelines:
|
| > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
| That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to
| reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that
| gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
| MattJ100 wrote:
| From the HN guidelines[1]:
|
| "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
| That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to
| reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that
| gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. "
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| holoduke wrote:
| Many of the roads in Europe between cities are former roman
| roads. Sometimes you can even see ancient small bridges along the
| bigger highways. The romans cut out entire mountains to guide
| roads through. Amazing work.
| jonmon6691 wrote:
| I don't know if "Genava" is the same as modern day Geneva CH, but
| if it is, then how is can it be correct to show Vienna to the
| west of it? I get that a subway map abstracts the physical
| layout, but surely this is a mistake in the topology??
| ipsi wrote:
| I believe the Vienna on the map is, today, Vienne, a French
| Commune: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienne,_Is%C3%A8re
| alephxyz wrote:
| The current city of Vienna was Vindobana in Roman times. The
| Gaul Vienna on this map is now
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienne,_Is%C3%A8re
| AlbertCory wrote:
| There's a series on Amazon Prime where a Brit actually travels
| the main Roman Roads in England, revisiting the history while he
| goes.
|
| They actually demonstrate how they got the roads so straight.
| raddles wrote:
| Is it this?
|
| Britain's Ancient Tracks with Tony Robinson
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6165532/
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(page generated 2024-06-06 23:00 UTC)