After a five-year effort, researchers have released the most detailed map yet of the Roman Empire's sprawling road network—all 185,000 miles of it. That's 60,000 miles more than had been previously documented, though co-lead author Tom Brughmans tells Scientific American there's an educated-guess element to the high-resolution map: about 90% of the routes are considered "conjectured"—meaning supported by strong evidence—while 7% are labeled "hypothetical," meaning they sit where researchers expect roads to have been. Only 2.737% are mapped with certainty, per the study in Scientific Data.
The AP reports it's the first major atlas of ancient Roman road networks to be released in 25 years; advances in technology and other newly accessible sources that emerged over that period heightened researchers' ability to locate ancient roadways. The online database, dubbed Itiner-e, covers everything from major highways to local paths stretching from Great Britain to North Africa and draws on satellite imagery and aerial photography—including recently digitized photos taken by WWII pilots—historical documents, and archaeological reports.
The AP elaborates: In cases where ancient accounts suggested there might have been a "lost" road, the researchers analyzed the terrain from above, looking for subtle signs like variations in vegetation, soil, or elevation or hints of ancient engineering in the form of raised mounds or cut hillsides. "It becomes a massive game of connecting the dots on a continental scale," says Brughmans.
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The map offers "a good, Empire-wide overview of almost the complete Roman road network with main and secondary roads" around CE 150, a peak period for the empire, says co-lead author Adam Pažout. The map shows roads ranging from the well-known—such as a portion of England's A5, which traces the ancient Watling Street—to minor local tracks linking villas and farms. "The roads are anywhere that the Romans walked," Brughmans notes.
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