Researchers map 3 lakh km of ancient Roman roads in new digital dataset

A road in the ancient Roman city of Ostia Antica. File pic/iStock

At its height, the Roman empire covered some 50,00,000 sq km and was home to around 60 million people. This vast territory and huge population were held together via a network of long-distance roads connecting places hundreds and even thousands of kilometres apart. These archaeological remnants, as well as written records, can help build a picture of what the road network looked like thousands of years ago. A new, comprehensive map and digital dataset published by a team of researchers shows almost 300,000 km of roads spanning an area of close to 40,00,000 sq km. This represents a substantial 59 per cent increase over the previous mapping of 188,555 km of Roman roads.

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