Historic roads and trails

The Post Track, a prehistoric causeway in the valley of the River Brue in the Somerset Levels, England, is one of the oldest known constructed trackways and dates from around 3800 BCE.

The Han dynasty expanded the Central Asian section of the trade routes around 114 BCE through the missions and explorations of the Chinese imperial envoy Zhang Qian.

Kaidō, however, do not include San'yōdō, San'indō, Nankaidō and Saikaidō, which were part of the even more ancient system of Yamato government called Gokishichidō.

As an important commodity, sometimes dubbed "the gold of the north", amber was transported overland by way of the Vistula and Dnieper rivers to the Mediterranean area from at least the 16th century BC.

[18][19][20] The quantity of amber in the Royal Tomb of Qatna, Syria, is unparalleled for known second millennium BC sites in the Levant and the Ancient Near East.

Hærvejen (Danish, meaning "the army road") ran from Viborg, Denmark through Flensburg (in the present northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein) to Hamburg.

Concentrations of mounds, defensive ditches, settlements and other historic landmarks can be found along the road and sections of it can be traced back to 4000 BC.

[23] They ranged from small local roads to broad, long-distance highways built to connect cities, major towns and military bases.

The Wittemoor timber trackway is a log causeway or corduroy road across a bog at Neuenhuntdorf, part of the Berne in the district of Wesermarsch in Lower Saxony, Germany.

Their breadth was decreed as an unimpeded passageway a lance's width, about three metres, which the landholders through which the Hellweg passed were required to maintain.

On British hills, the line of tracks often run a little below the actual crest of a ridge, possibly to afford some shelter from the wind or to avoid travellers presenting themselves to marauders as a target on the skyline.

The high dry ground made travel easy and provided a measure of protection by giving traders a commanding view, warning against potential attacks.

The Icknield Way follows the chalk escarpment that includes the Berkshire Downs and Chiltern Hills, in southern and eastern England, from Norfolk to Wiltshire.

Other examples of historic roads in England include the Mariners' Way in Devon, and the Long Causeway – a medieval packhorse route that ran from Sheffield to Hathersage.

The Mariners' Way was created in the eighteenth century (or earlier) by sailors who, in travelling across Devon between the ports of Bideford and Dartmouth, linked existing lanes, tracks and footpaths to form a direct route.

[43] Mastiles Lane was a Roman marching road and later an important route for monks leading sheep from Fountains Abbey to summer pasture on higher ground.

Watkins theorized that these alignments were created for ease of overland trekking on ancient trackways during neolithic times and had persisted in the landscape over millennia.

[45][46] Improvements in metallurgy meant that by 2000 BC stone-cutting tools were generally available in the Middle East and Greece allowing local streets to be paved.

[47] Notably, in about 2000 BC, the Minoans built a 50 km (31-mile) paved road from Knossos in north Crete through the mountains to Gortyn and Lebena, a port on the south coast of the island, which had side drains, a 200 mm (8-inch) thick pavement of sandstone blocks bound with clay-gypsum mortar, covered by a layer of basaltic flagstones and had separate shoulders.

The Corlea Trackway is an ancient road built on a bog consisting of packed hazel, birch and alder planks placed lengthways across the track, and occasional cross timbers for support.

[49] Ireland's prehistoric roads were minimally developed, but oak-plank pathways covered many bog areas, and five great 'ways' (Irish: slighe) converged at the Hill of Tara.

The much longer Siberian route started in Moscow as the Vladimir Highway (a medieval road) and passed through Murom, Kozmodemyansk, Kazan, Perm, Kungur, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Tobolsk, Tara, Kainsk, Tomsk, Yeniseysk and Irkutsk.

One branch continued east to Nerchinsk while the other went south to the border post of Kyakhta where it linked to camel caravans that crossed Mongolia to a Great Wall gate at Kalgan.

From Tyumen the road proceeded through Yalutorovsk, Ishim, Omsk, Tomsk, Achinsk and Krasnoyarsk before rejoining the older route at Irkutsk.

[52] Darius built the road to facilitate rapid communication throughout his very large empire from Susa, Syria to Sardis, Turkey.

[53] It is claimed that some of the earliest roads were created by humans who followed already existing paths made by animals,[54] and, in particular, that trails created by the herds of buffalo shaped the routes taken first by indigenous peoples and then colonists, especially in North America: However, Frank G. Roe disputes this theory – and its wider application – in "The 'Wild Animal Path' Origin of Ancient Roads".

[56] Some suggest that the portage routes of North American indigenous peoples followed "the game trails the animals had made around rough water.

A complex system of prehistoric trails are located at Tumamoc Hill near Tucson, Arizona where archaeological traces have been found including petroglyphs, pottery shards and mortar holes.

In modern times, the Lincoln Highway (dedicated 1913) was the first road for the automobile across the United States of America, spanning 3389 miles coast-to-coast from New York City to San Francisco.

They gave the Selkirk colonists and their neighbours, the Métis people, an outlet for their furs and a source of supplies other than the Hudson's Bay Company, which was unable to enforce its monopoly in the face of the competition that used the trails.