How 2000 year-old roads predict modern-day prosperity
Although some question the causality of this study, I tend to agree with its findings. The research team took a map of the Roman road system and put it over satellite imagery of nighttime illumination in 2010.
From the beginning of the article:The image below shows the resultant map. Ancient Roman roadways are in light yellow, while the boundaries of the Roman Empire as of 117 A.D. are outlined in red. The background layer shows modern nighttime illumination.
(Washington Post illustration using data from NOAA Earth Observatory, Natural Earth and Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilization)
The visual relationship is particularly striking in France. There, you can clearly see the paths of ancient roadways connecting not just major modern cities, like Paris and Lyon, but also many minor ones, too. Across inland France, nearly every junction of ancient roads is marked by a splash of light in the modern era.
Read the rest at the link.Prosperity begets prosperity: On a global level, economists and historians have shown that places that prospered 100, 500, even 1,000 years ago tend to be more economically developed today.
But how? We’re less clear on the exact channels by which economic activity sustains itself over the millennia. Could dynastic wealth play a role? How about the concentration and transmission of knowledge via institutions such as schools and libraries? How does military might factor in?
Now, a team of Danish economists has put forth a forceful case for one largely overlooked driver of economic development in Europe: roadways built by the Roman empire nearly two thousand years ago. They demonstrate that the density of ancient Roman roads at a given point in Europe strongly correlates with present-day prosperity, as measured by modern-day road density, population density and even satellite imagery of nighttime lighting.
Their data shows that infrastructure investments are — if you’ll pardon an unpardonable pun — a pathway to long-term prosperity.
To arrive at this conclusion, Carl-Johan Dalgaard of the University of Copenhagen and his colleagues first obtained a geographic database of the major roads of the Roman era that had been compiled by Harvard University’s Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations.
Roman roadways were massive infrastructure projects even by modern standards. They consisted of several base layers, including stone, gravel and sand, over which large stone slabs were laid. At the empire’s peak in 117 A.D., scholars estimate, the Romans had built more than 80,000 kilometers of roadway across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Many of them have lasted well into the present day.