An international research team has created a new map Roman Empire — and it extends the ancient road network by more than 60,000 miles (100,000 kilometers).
The saying, of course, goes: “all roads lead to Rome“But while it is true that many of the Empire's major cities were connected to the capital by major roads, the secondary roads in the network have not been studied in depth,” he said. Tom Brugmansarchaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark and co-author of the study describing the roads, which was published Thursday (Nov. 6) in the journal. Scientific data.
Brugmans and his colleagues have created a new digital atlas of Roman roads in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa called This is the route The Itiner-e platform is open access and, according to the study, includes high-resolution spatial data on Roman roads derived from historical and archaeological information, topographic maps and remote sensing data.
The resulting map includes nearly 186,000 miles (300,000 km) of roads, twice as many as other maps. And this huge network of roads speaks of the power of the Roman Empire.
“This massive integrated network was a game changer in history,” Brugmans said. “This meant that for the first time, a plague, an economic boom, or a new religion could become ‘continental’ and change the world.”
One example Brugmans gives is Antonin Plaguewhich broke out in 165 AD and devastated the Roman Empireresulting in the death of perhaps a quarter of the population.
“By mapping the ancient roads along which the Antonine Plague spread, we obtain a 2,000-year case study of the centuries-long social impact of pandemics,” Brugmans said.
According to Itiner-e, it is a useful digital tool that will improve experts' understanding of the Roman world. Jeffrey BeckerMediterranean archaeologist at Binghamton University in New York, who was not involved in the study. The authors conducted extensive data analysis to compile the road data set, Becker told Live Science in an email.
But Becker says there are some gaps in the Itiner-e map, which may be a result of data availability as well as the difficulty even experts have in recognizing the different types of Roman roads in the archaeological data.
Brugmans said the new data set “includes almost 200,000 km of secondary roads, but we expect this number could be increased significantly.” So Brugmans and his colleagues see their new map as a “call to action,” showing other experts where historical gaps remain or where archaeological excavations are needed.
“We know there are a lot of roads we haven’t found yet.”
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