7 ms·

How 2,000-year-old roads predict modern-day prosperity

61 points by lazydon 8y ago

anovikov 8y ago
Maybe it's whole lot simpler and it's just things like rivers and terrain shape human habitation and economy patterns both now and 2000 years ago?
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Bingo. I've been discussiing this on G+. In paarticular, adding topographic maps helps show transport logic pointedly ignored by the paper. The areas may simply be more amenable to prosperity: good land, water, resources. Roads were little used for transport. Goods moved by water. Rivers. Sea. Canals, mostly after 1500. Costs were 1/20th or less of overland drayage. Transport routes are established between points of interest, and those develop according to potential. Several of the major roads follow coastlines or rivers. Others bridge river valleys, generally through other valleys and over passes. The Roman empire itself grew into areas offering food, lumber, or other trade. The paper's conclusion of causality is grossly premature and overstated. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/France_map_Lambert-93_topographic-ancient_Roman_roads.svg/1099px-France_map_Lambert-93_topographic-ancient_Roman_roads.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Fr... http://floodmap.net/Elevation/ElevationMap/CountryMaps/?cz=FR_2 http://floodmap.net/Elevation/ElevationMap/CountryMaps/?cz=F... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Topographic_map_of_the_Seine_basin_%28English_png%29.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Topograp...
  - growlist 8y ago
    I've only had a quick skim but what worries me is that the authors are investigating a fundamentally geographic problem yet don't apparently have a background in GI science. For example, the authors use fixed grid cells for analysis, yet the modifiable areal unit problem states that varying the boundaries of your analysis can change the result, and especially given the coarseness of their chosen grid I'd like to see at least some attempt to handle this (perhaps repeat with smaller/shifted grid cells, compare results), or failing that at very least evidence of awareness of the problem. I've an MSc is GIS and one thing I learned is that even with the best data and methodology (PhD level spatial stats) it can be extremely difficult to establish statistical significance, and I'm not convinced here. I'd like to see a far more sophisticated treatment of the GI science methodologically before the leap into the historical/economic domain. I strongly suspect the geo side would fall apart under close analysis, thus undermining everything beyond that point.
    - dredmorbius 8y ago
      More or less my take. Misuse of statistics.
  - vidanay 8y ago
    The images from the article distinctly show the roads and population centers which then shows the mountain ranges in "negative space." (I agree with you, just pointing out another observation)
  - et1337 8y ago
    What about the negative result TFA found for the Middle East and Africa?
    - dredmorbius 8y ago
      Topology and climate of both regions differs markedly. The significant population centres in both regions developed along their respective major river systems. Most especially the Nile, and Tigris-Euphrates.
- notahacker 8y ago
  Yep. Reminds me of the old path dependency story about the dimensions of the Saturn booster rockets being determined by the official dimensions for Roman war chariots (and in turn, by the width of a horse's ass). The rockets were transported through tunnels by rail, which used a 4'8 gauge determined by the British, who supposedly based their standard gauge on the width of wheel ruts in their ancient roadways because they were more used to designing horses and carts. Except that the early railways used a range of gauges that were only later standardised, and tunnel widths would have been broadly similar even if they'd standardised on a slightly larger or smaller gauge because the real determining factor in early tunnel boring was to bore the smallest possible tunnel with a cylindrical cross section which could accommodate carriages in which passengers could stand... And more importantly, the booster rockets were a fair bit smaller than the actual width of the tunnels they were transported through because rocket aerodynamics also favour small cylindrical cross sections. Even if there had never been people called Romans to specify war chariot widths or even creatures called horses, or the US had standardised on 7' gauge also widely used in early English railways, they'd probably have ended up the same size.
ramblerouser 8y ago
>How does military might factor in? I don't think that sentence is grammatically correct. The study does a poor job of explaining why there are so many roads in Turkey and most of the middle east, and yet such little development there. Such a stark contrast between western Europe and the Islamic world casts doubt on the idea that the roads played the dominant economic factor over the past two millennia.
- scatters 8y ago
  "military might" is a noun phrase (adjective + noun), "factor in" is a verb phrase (verb + preposition). Hopefully this helps your parse.
  - jobigoud 8y ago
    Not a native speaker but shouln't it be "how might the military factor in"?
    - netsharc 8y ago
      Here "might" is a noun meaning "strength", not the verb https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/might https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/might It can even be replaced 1:1 with strength, so "How does military strength factor in?"
- toyg 8y ago
  Differences weren't that stark before the industrial revolution, a boat that the Islamic world clearly missed for a number of reasons. The other big factor is Suez. The channel basically killed Euro-Asian land routes that had been maintained for thousands of years.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  "Military might" == "military strength". Rewritten: how might one consider the strength of armies?
- megaman22 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) The impact of the Mongol conquest almost cannot be overstated.
dzdt 8y ago
Alternate hypothesis: locations 2000-year-old cities predicts modern day prosperity. And also locations of 2000-year-old cities predicts locations of 2000-year old roads -- uncontroversial I think. The proposed mechanisms are (1) cities are stable on millenial timescales, continuing to develop and attract wealth (2) geography is stable on millenial timescales, so the places where wealth-attracting cities tend to be located are the same then as now. Contra (2), there has been a shift in importance of different transportation networks and energy sources. The roads discussed in the article are transportation network, but waterways historically have been even more important. And more recently rail networks as well. The shift from water to coal to grid-distributed electricity has loosened the connection of energy to geography.
- mcphage 8y ago
  > And also locations of 2000-year-old cities predicts locations of 2000-year old roads The article claims the correlation is the opposite of what you stated—roads were built, and then cities built up around them. From the article: > “Roman roads were often constructed in newly conquered areas without any extensive, or at least not comparable, existing network of cities and infrastructure,” Dalgaard and his colleagues write. In many instances, the roads came first. Settlements and cities came later.
  - singularity2001 8y ago
    Yet roads were probably build through towns, which were created in geographically advantageous locations.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    The Romans were not unaware of principles on the siting and prospects of new settlements. See Vitruvius's De Architectura, or The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy by Alain Bresson: As early as the fourth century BCE, ancient Greek city planning was very far advanced. When possible—that is, when a city was to be founded or refounded—the site was carefully chosen, taking into account first of all climatic conditions. Drawing on a tradition that goes back to the physician and hygienist Hippocrates and to Aristotle, and whose “intermediaries could only be the architects who built the Hellenistic cities,” the Roman architect Vitruvius recommended choosing a site where the temperature remained moderate and that was far from swamps, in order to avoid miasmas and fogs. https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10376.html https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10376.html
JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Is this just a heatmap of population?
vgallur 8y ago
For spanish speakers interested in the subject, here is an interview with another member of the team, Pablo Selaya, about this research. https://www.ivoox.com/principio-incertidumbre-calzadas-romanas-desarrollo-audios-mp3_rf_26186768_1.html https://www.ivoox.com/principio-incertidumbre-calzadas-roman...
WalterBright 8y ago
I would expect that the roads were built over existing trails, as those trails would likely be the most efficient routes between places. Not punched through virgin wilderness.
- microtherion 8y ago
  Romans had considerably more powerful engineering at their disposal, and placed a high priority on straightness. Punching through obstacles was pretty much a trademark practice for them: https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2786/4032626656_8e2fd14b1b_b.jpg https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2786/4032626656_8e2fd14b1b_b.j...
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    It's an impressive picture. But punching through an obstacle that a trail winds around is not the same thing as punching through a virgin wilderness.
- anvandare 8y ago
  If only we knew why our feet walk the way they do. https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/calf-path https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/calf-path
navane 8y ago
How about the roads in the ancient middle east? How about the roads in current USA?
jbg_ 8y ago
Non-AMP URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/06/how-year-old-roads-predict-modern-day-prosperity/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/06/how-year-...
- dang 8y ago
  Changed from https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/business/2018/08/06/how-year-old-roads-predict-modern-day-prosperity/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/business/2018/08/06/h....
barking 8y ago
The image on that webpage suggests there were no Roman roads in Greece

61 points by lazydon 8y ago

Maybe it's whole lot simpler and it's just things like rivers and terrain shape human habitation and economy patterns both now and 2000 years ago?

dredmorbius 8y ago
Bingo. I've been discussiing this on G+. In paarticular, adding topographic maps helps show transport logic pointedly ignored by the paper. The areas may simply be more amenable to prosperity: good land, water, resources. Roads were little used for transport. Goods moved by water. Rivers. Sea. Canals, mostly after 1500. Costs were 1/20th or less of overland drayage. Transport routes are established between points of interest, and those develop according to potential. Several of the major roads follow coastlines or rivers. Others bridge river valleys, generally through other valleys and over passes. The Roman empire itself grew into areas offering food, lumber, or other trade. The paper's conclusion of causality is grossly premature and overstated. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/France_map_Lambert-93_topographic-ancient_Roman_roads.svg/1099px-France_map_Lambert-93_topographic-ancient_Roman_roads.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Fr... http://floodmap.net/Elevation/ElevationMap/CountryMaps/?cz=FR_2 http://floodmap.net/Elevation/ElevationMap/CountryMaps/?cz=F... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Topographic_map_of_the_Seine_basin_%28English_png%29.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Topograp...
- growlist 8y ago
  I've only had a quick skim but what worries me is that the authors are investigating a fundamentally geographic problem yet don't apparently have a background in GI science. For example, the authors use fixed grid cells for analysis, yet the modifiable areal unit problem states that varying the boundaries of your analysis can change the result, and especially given the coarseness of their chosen grid I'd like to see at least some attempt to handle this (perhaps repeat with smaller/shifted grid cells, compare results), or failing that at very least evidence of awareness of the problem. I've an MSc is GIS and one thing I learned is that even with the best data and methodology (PhD level spatial stats) it can be extremely difficult to establish statistical significance, and I'm not convinced here. I'd like to see a far more sophisticated treatment of the GI science methodologically before the leap into the historical/economic domain. I strongly suspect the geo side would fall apart under close analysis, thus undermining everything beyond that point.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    More or less my take. Misuse of statistics.
- vidanay 8y ago
  The images from the article distinctly show the roads and population centers which then shows the mountain ranges in "negative space." (I agree with you, just pointing out another observation)
- et1337 8y ago
  What about the negative result TFA found for the Middle East and Africa?
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    Topology and climate of both regions differs markedly. The significant population centres in both regions developed along their respective major river systems. Most especially the Nile, and Tigris-Euphrates.
notahacker 8y ago
Yep. Reminds me of the old path dependency story about the dimensions of the Saturn booster rockets being determined by the official dimensions for Roman war chariots (and in turn, by the width of a horse's ass). The rockets were transported through tunnels by rail, which used a 4'8 gauge determined by the British, who supposedly based their standard gauge on the width of wheel ruts in their ancient roadways because they were more used to designing horses and carts. Except that the early railways used a range of gauges that were only later standardised, and tunnel widths would have been broadly similar even if they'd standardised on a slightly larger or smaller gauge because the real determining factor in early tunnel boring was to bore the smallest possible tunnel with a cylindrical cross section which could accommodate carriages in which passengers could stand... And more importantly, the booster rockets were a fair bit smaller than the actual width of the tunnels they were transported through because rocket aerodynamics also favour small cylindrical cross sections. Even if there had never been people called Romans to specify war chariot widths or even creatures called horses, or the US had standardised on 7' gauge also widely used in early English railways, they'd probably have ended up the same size.

ramblerouser 8y ago

>How does military might factor in? I don't think that sentence is grammatically correct. The study does a poor job of explaining why there are so many roads in Turkey and most of the middle east, and yet such little development there. Such a stark contrast between western Europe and the Islamic world casts doubt on the idea that the roads played the dominant economic factor over the past two millennia.

scatters 8y ago
"military might" is a noun phrase (adjective + noun), "factor in" is a verb phrase (verb + preposition). Hopefully this helps your parse.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  Not a native speaker but shouln't it be "how might the military factor in"?
  - netsharc 8y ago
    Here "might" is a noun meaning "strength", not the verb https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/might https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/might It can even be replaced 1:1 with strength, so "How does military strength factor in?"
toyg 8y ago
Differences weren't that stark before the industrial revolution, a boat that the Islamic world clearly missed for a number of reasons. The other big factor is Suez. The channel basically killed Euro-Asian land routes that had been maintained for thousands of years.
dredmorbius 8y ago
"Military might" == "military strength". Rewritten: how might one consider the strength of armies?
megaman22 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) The impact of the Mongol conquest almost cannot be overstated.

dzdt 8y ago

Alternate hypothesis: locations 2000-year-old cities predicts modern day prosperity. And also locations of 2000-year-old cities predicts locations of 2000-year old roads -- uncontroversial I think. The proposed mechanisms are (1) cities are stable on millenial timescales, continuing to develop and attract wealth (2) geography is stable on millenial timescales, so the places where wealth-attracting cities tend to be located are the same then as now. Contra (2), there has been a shift in importance of different transportation networks and energy sources. The roads discussed in the article are transportation network, but waterways historically have been even more important. And more recently rail networks as well. The shift from water to coal to grid-distributed electricity has loosened the connection of energy to geography.

mcphage 8y ago
> And also locations of 2000-year-old cities predicts locations of 2000-year old roads The article claims the correlation is the opposite of what you stated—roads were built, and then cities built up around them. From the article: > “Roman roads were often constructed in newly conquered areas without any extensive, or at least not comparable, existing network of cities and infrastructure,” Dalgaard and his colleagues write. In many instances, the roads came first. Settlements and cities came later.
- singularity2001 8y ago
  Yet roads were probably build through towns, which were created in geographically advantageous locations.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  The Romans were not unaware of principles on the siting and prospects of new settlements. See Vitruvius's De Architectura, or The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy by Alain Bresson: As early as the fourth century BCE, ancient Greek city planning was very far advanced. When possible—that is, when a city was to be founded or refounded—the site was carefully chosen, taking into account first of all climatic conditions. Drawing on a tradition that goes back to the physician and hygienist Hippocrates and to Aristotle, and whose “intermediaries could only be the architects who built the Hellenistic cities,” the Roman architect Vitruvius recommended choosing a site where the temperature remained moderate and that was far from swamps, in order to avoid miasmas and fogs. https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10376.html https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10376.html

JoeAltmaier 8y ago

Is this just a heatmap of population?

vgallur 8y ago

For spanish speakers interested in the subject, here is an interview with another member of the team, Pablo Selaya, about this research. https://www.ivoox.com/principio-incertidumbre-calzadas-romanas-desarrollo-audios-mp3_rf_26186768_1.html https://www.ivoox.com/principio-incertidumbre-calzadas-roman...

WalterBright 8y ago

I would expect that the roads were built over existing trails, as those trails would likely be the most efficient routes between places. Not punched through virgin wilderness.

microtherion 8y ago
Romans had considerably more powerful engineering at their disposal, and placed a high priority on straightness. Punching through obstacles was pretty much a trademark practice for them: https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2786/4032626656_8e2fd14b1b_b.jpg https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2786/4032626656_8e2fd14b1b_b.j...
- WalterBright 8y ago
  It's an impressive picture. But punching through an obstacle that a trail winds around is not the same thing as punching through a virgin wilderness.
anvandare 8y ago
If only we knew why our feet walk the way they do. https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/calf-path https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/calf-path

navane 8y ago

How about the roads in the ancient middle east? How about the roads in current USA?

jbg_ 8y ago

Non-AMP URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/06/how-year-old-roads-predict-modern-day-prosperity/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/06/how-year-...

dang 8y ago
Changed from https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/business/2018/08/06/how-year-old-roads-predict-modern-day-prosperity/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/business/2018/08/06/h....

barking 8y ago

The image on that webpage suggests there were no Roman roads in Greece