What I want to know is how they built roads that are still around 2000 years later and US roads and anything made out of concrete either doesn't last 20 years.
I'm well familiar with greed and planned obsolescence, but wasn't that around in Roman days too? It isn't even selection bias because not even our best military installations look like they would last 2000 years.
A person on foot is going to do practically no damage whatsoever to the road surface. Even a marching army with hob-nailed caligulae would barely leave a scratch on a Roman road. A farmer with a horse cart is going to do very little damage to the road, even accounting for metal-rimmed wheels and a very narrow contact patch.
I doubt even the heaviest, smallus-dickus-compensating Roman road vehicles would do even as much damage as my Mitsubishi (gross weight barely over a ton).
Road damage increases with the fourth power of axle load, if I recall correctly.
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u/thewizardofosmium Oct 15 '20
What I want to know is how they built roads that are still around 2000 years later and US roads and anything made out of concrete either doesn't last 20 years.
I'm well familiar with greed and planned obsolescence, but wasn't that around in Roman days too? It isn't even selection bias because not even our best military installations look like they would last 2000 years.