Good roads are absolutely essential to civilization. Many of the most successful countries in history were hugely dependent on their roads for their success. To my mind, the two ancient civilizations with the most impressive road systems are the Roman and Incan Empires.
The Incan road system, the shorter of the two, was still more than 20,000 miles long. The Incans did such a good job that much of the road is still useable today—even segments that haven’t seen a lick of maintenance in four centuries—though more than 75 percent of it has been destroyed by Spaniards and modern construction. The Incan roads were heavily used by the Chasquis, a network of runners that sent messages and valuable, lightweight goods across the empire, using relays. The individual Chasqui ran as much as a hundred and fifty miles per day through the mountains—that’s six marathons. The roads were also used heavily by normal traffic: trade on alpacas and llamas, etc.
Ancient Roman Rest Stop?
Rome’s roads are, without a doubt, the best known of all ancient road systems—not surprising, since it’s the best known ancient civilization of all time. There were 250,000 miles of roads in the network, an order of magnitude larger than the Incan network.
It’s not to say that the Incan network wasn’t an incredible piece of engineering and architecture; it was, but the Romans were just utterly obsessed with road building. There is an astonishing number of these roads still in use, whether covered in modern construction or even in their original form.
Yes, roads are an absolutely elemental part of civilization. I should put this all into perspective, though. America has nearly four MILLION miles of roads. Our population dwarfs Ancient Rome or the Incan Empire and, of course, the American population alone is greater than that of the entire world during either of those time periods.
So, next time you’re upset about construction, just sit back and think about that before complaining. It’s a small price to pay. (Unless it’s in front of your house early in the morning. That’s just the worst.)