US EditionGoogle Maps for Ancient Rome: Digital Archaeology Brings 2,000-Year-Old Highways Back to Life
- Named Itiner-e, the new digital map includes 299,171 kilometers of ancient roads spanning from the British Isles to the Middle East and is described in a study published in Scientific Data.
- Frustration over existing maps led Brughmans and colleagues to create Itiner-e to improve upon the Barrington Atlas, which has poor resolution despite being most complete.
- Brughmans and colleagues digitised roads by identifying them from archaeological and historical sources, using topographic maps and remote sensing, and classing 34.58 percent—103,478 kilometers—as main roads around AD 150.
- The new map increases known coverage in the Iberian peninsula, Greece and North Africa, and the total length is around 110,000 kilometers greater than previous estimates, researchers say.
- The team warns that mapping precision remains limited, noting only 2.7 percent of roads are drawn exactly while 89.8 percent are less precise and 7.4 percent are hypothesized, making it a call to action, researchers behind Itiner-e say.
29 Articles
29 Articles
All roads in ancient Rome stretched far longer than previously known, said study
As the saying went, all roads once led to Rome — and scientists now say those roads stretched 50% longer than previously known. A new study combines information from historical records, ancient journals, locations of milestones and other archival data…
A study shows that the road network of the Roman Empire was much larger than previously assumed. Researchers put the routes together on an online map. The reconstruction provides exciting insights, but remains incomplete.
During the heyday, the Roman Empire had about 55 million inhabitants who lived on three continents. The reconstruction of the road network makes it clear that it was much larger than previously thought. A research team also notes further surprising details of the infrastructure of that time.
The researchers attribute this increase to higher coverage of roads in the Iberian Peninsula, Greece and North Africa and to the adaptation of previously proposed road routes.
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