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Joined: Mar 2002
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692 |
ROAD:
1a. abbr. Rd. An open, generally public way for the passage of vehicles, people, and animals. b. The surface of a road; a roadbed. 2. A course or path: the road to riches. 3. A railroad. 4. Nautical A roadstead. Often used in the plural.
Etymology: Middle English rode, rade, a riding, road, from Old English r d. See reidh- in Appendix I.
Appendix I: Indo-European Roots: reidh- To ride. Derivatives include raid, road, and array.
I. Basic form *reidh-. 1a. raid, road, from Old English r d, a riding, road, from Germanic *raid-.
Ancient roadbuilders:
Mesopotamians - in 3500 BC.
Chinese - by the 11th century BC and by the 2nd century BC were responsible for the famous Silk Road, evocative and romantic (to me at least – I know ‘fings ain’t wot they useta be’, but still).
Incas - built a network of roads through the Andes, including galleries cut through solid rock.
Babylonians - had a system of roads radiating from Babylon.
Egyptians - built highways for the transport of materials used in building the pyramids etc.
Romans - the Appian Way was begun about 312 BC, the Flaminian Way about 220 BC.
The Roman Empire eventually had a road system of about 80,000 km and their work can still be seen. Roman roads are noted for running in a straight line, but even where the road follows a ridge or the valley of a river the curves are not smooth. Instead, the road was laid out in short straight lengths following the terrain, aligned from one high point to another with the road following each alignment right up to the angle. Most roads were defined by curb stones on each side.
Major Roman roads were laid upon an embankment, called an agger, to form a sub-base. The agger could either be just an earth bank or, using layers of stone or other locally available material, raised up to 5 feet high and 50 feet wide with a layer of stones at the bottom to provide drainage. This bottom layer of the agger is the statumen.
The lower part of the road proper, the rudus, was of gravel and sand sometimes mixed with clay, and compacted in several successive layers. This was really what we would call the road base, laid on top of the agger.
The upper layers of the road were paved with gravel, flint or other small, broken stones. After the second century B.C. stone slabs were sometimes used for paving; from that time roads had to be paved in towns, but sand or pebbles sufficed on country sections. The total depth of a road, from surface to the top of the agger, could be 1.5 meters with the surface steeply sloped to each side from the centre.
Theme will continue tomorrow.
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
New Amsterdam, (aka NY) didn't have paved roads in town for the first 20 years...
when the law was passed requiring paved streets, the first street to get paved was called brick street...it was the street that housed most of the beer and malt shops in NA/NY
and a single block of the street remains today (just of bowling green, in the very down town edge of manhattan)
for many years most of NY streets were paved with what the locals call 'cobble stones', but aren't, they are technically 'belgian paving blocks (cobble stones are rounder, belgian paving blocks are sort of brick shaped, but larger, each one weights between 20 to 30 lbs.)
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Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 2,154
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 2,154 |
"cobblestones are rounder" and bone rattling to ride a bike over!
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Cool to have the names of the layers, dxb--thanks. It still kills me that you-all have what you call 'metalled' roads.
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Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 742
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 742 |
>It still kills me that you-all have what you call 'metalled' roads.
Most of our "metalled" roads (we call them gravel roads here) are in much better nick than the sealed collection of potholes and abysslets that passes for a highway between Cesena and Ravenna. Coming off the autostrada onto that was simultaneously an exercise in topology and phrenology.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear dxb: "agger" - so that's where "aggregate" for toad building came from.
It takes around 20,000 tons of aggregate to make a one mile stretch of four-lane highway, and tailings are a proven aggregate in road building in towns around ...
www.nrri.umn.edu/default/newsrelease/taconitetailings.htm
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Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692
Pooh-Bah
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OP
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692 |
It still kills me that you-all have what you call 'metalled' roads. ~ Jackie
I came across what could be the origin of that phrase. The Romans sensibly used local materials in their road construction. Where a road was passing through an iron making area they would use the slag left over from the iron working to mix in with their top layer, or wear coat. This would rust into hard coagulated chunks that proved highly efficacious and long lasting. Truly a metalled surface.
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
I have the vague idea that metal originally meant anything dug up rather than specifically what we now call metals. So stones from a quarry were also "metal". The Latin and Greek dictionaries in Perseus would seem to confirm this. The Latin metallum and Greek metallon both meant mine or quarry (and the products thereof). Latin: http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y597127A4Greek: http://makeashorterlink.com/?J1B7227A4 Bingley
Bingley
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