Ancient trackways
It is well known that many modern roads follow the paths of previous trackways. If these previous paths were of Roman origin, then it is likely that the road will be very straight. But what about all the curvey, bendy ones? Sometimes, especially in mountainous areas, the route will be pretty well determined by the lie of the land. Some well-used paths in ancient times were ridge-ways. By travelling across the highest part of the land, our forebears avoided bogs and swamps and kept their feet as dry as possible.
Many modern roads, however, follow no particular ancient route. These were carved across the landscape with no more regard for the spirit of the place than the Romans displayed. As with the Romans, these routes and bypasses are designed with nothing but economics in mind.
A little story
The New Forest, in southern England, is inhabited mainly by deer, ponies and the occasional semi-wild pig, apart from the usual background of birds, insects and small mammals. Walking there recently, my partner and I were away from well-marked hiking trails, but near to a river and following well-worn paths though the trees, with the grass and scrub worn down to a narrow strip of bare soil in many places.
What surprised me was that, although many feet had trod this way, we were both becoming irritated by low branches swinging back into the face of whoever was following as we walked. Why was this such hard work?
Suddenly I realised that these were not 'human' paths, but paths cut and followed daily by deer, ponies and boar. Yet they were just as intelligently routed as any man-made path, avoiding the mud yet taking the best and most direct route along the river bank.
Dinosaur Paths
We humans were not just plonked onto this earth fully formed. When our earliest humanoid ancestors tried to pick their way though each ancient landscape, all the wild creatures that had gone before them previously had already tried to do the same. There would have been paths for the earliest humans to follow! And what about those other creatures? Well, of course, they had paths to follow too, laid down by those that had gone before them.
Discounting the parts of the world that have been ravaged by ice ages, there is no limit to how far back, in the evolution of life on Earth's dry land, this process could have gone. As the size of the dominant species changes, so does the size of the paths and the lengths of the routes, but only rarely, before the Romans, did we humans start from scratch in choosing our route.
See also
