Motorway maximus: Unearthed, a stunning Roman super-highway built 1,900 years ago

Daily mail ^ | Feb 7, 2011 | reporter

[Islander7]

* The 15ft-high road ran from London to Exeter

It was a route once trod by legionnaires as they marched across a conquered land.

But, eventually, the Romans left Britain and the magnificent highway they created was reclaimed by nature and seemingly lost for ever.

Now, some 2,000 years after it was built, it has been uncovered in the depths of a forest in Dorset. And, remarkably, it shows no sign of the potholes that blight our modern roads.

[Islander7]

I was stationed at RAF Alconbury, in the 70s. There was a bridge across the River Ouse in the town of Huntingdon built by the Romans that was still in use. It was a trip to ride a bus over a 900 year old bridge!

[BBell]

Brought peace?

[Walkingfeather]

damn good thought.

[dfwgator]

All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

[ARepublicanForAllReasons]

"...what have the Romans ever done for us?

Every society beyond the hunter-gatherer stage has these things.

The Romans showed us how to bankrupt a once-prosperous nation by over-reaching global ambitions, watering down the definition of citizenship, and distracting the masses with bread and circuses.
Rome ended with military factions fighting over a shattered empire. The capital was changed to Constantinople, while the city of Rome was almost entirely depopulated.

Sound familiar?

[VOA]

“
Motorway maximus: Unearthed, a stunning Roman super-highway built 1,900 years ago
“

Who says infrastructure (and the maintainece thereof) doesn’t matter?

My last post of the night/morning.

[VOA]

“
And, remarkably, it shows no sign of the potholes that blight our modern roads.
“

Somewhere in heaven, purgatory, hell or some other destination...
some Romans are smiling...

[afraidfortherepublic]

Fabulous!

[colorado tanker]

This is basically an extension of Ackling Dyke, which is similarly high-banked. The assumption is the high bank was intended to impress the locals and discourage them from challenging the supremacy of Rome. The road was known to exist, but apparently the route through this forest had been lost. The talk about a super-highway seems to be hyperbole, although I suppose most of the Roman roads would have seemed that way to the locals back in the day.

[Old Student]

“I was stationed at RAF Alconbury, in the 70s. There was a bridge across the River Ouse in the town of Huntingdon built by the Romans that was still in use. It was a trip to ride a bus over a 900 year old bridge!”

I was stationed at Incirlik AS, Turkey in the mid-80’s, and there is a Roman bridge crossing the Ceyhan river near there, which carried all traffic to the city of Adana while their modern steel bridge was knocked out by flooding.

[aruanan]

It doesn’t look 85ft wide in the photos. I wish they had included more.

The entire earthwork is 85ft wide. That's from the outside edge of one ditch to the outside edge of the other ditch.

[Vanders9]

You can slam the Roman Empire over many issues, but they certainly knew how to build things!

[Smokin' Joe]

This makes me wonder if the climate may have been a bit colder and snowier at the time.

We commonly construct primary and secondary roads here with wide, deep ditches to contain drifting snow while a high raised roadbed lets the wind scour drifts off the road surface.

[PapaBear3625]

They're missing the obvious reason---a road that high with deep side ditches would make ambushing a passing Roman column from the woods very difficult.

Besides that, it allows water to drain away so the road stays dry, is not flooded by heavy rains, and also snow would tend to be blown off by winds into the ditches.

[Lancey Howard]

Besides that, it allows water to drain away so the road stays dry, is not flooded by heavy rains, and also snow would tend to be blown off by winds into the ditches.

Precisely.
No doubt the elevated road was built by having two columns of laborers looking across at each other an equal distance apart, who shoveled dirt into the middle, between them, thereby creating the elevated road and the drainage ditches at the same time.

[SunkenCiv]