Paver History (Part 3)
The Roman stone pavers helped make the Romans the biggest powerhouse nation in the world at the time. These amazing stone paved roads interconnected what would come to be known as the first and largest interstate highway system in the world, thus allowing the Romans to speedily bring supplies, communication, trade and commerce across vast networks of cities and towns. Although 50,000 miles of the roads were paved, another 200,000 miles of roads were connected to these main paved highways and byways. Because the Roman Empire was expanding at such a huge rate, they were able to use soldiers and slaves to continue their paving expansion. You can only imagine a lesser, underdeveloped civilization trying to compete or even fight with such a juggernaut!
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In our earlier blogs on Paver History we defined what paver means and found out where the oldest pavers were found, heading all the way back, over 5000 years ago. Greek and Roman pavers created incredible roads that extended tens of thousands of miles. They also used early paver technology in making pools, open patios, foyers, walkways and more. Instead of walking on dirt and mud, man was now walking on beautiful paved paths and instead of having a big mound of dirt in your yard, you had a stone paved patio that you and your family could enjoy!
Paved roads were used to expand militarily and politically but it also served as a means to exchange ideas, communications and brought innovation and forward philosophies and ideas. Pavers had a direct contribution to this expansion. The technology used to build these roads was developed as the roads were made and improved over and over. Romans actually tilted the paver stones to create a slight run off for rain; this use of tilting the road is still used in the engineering of today’s roads!