[...] a large international research team has just unveiled itiner-e, an amazing new project that mapped not only major Roman roadways, but minor ones as well. This is a really great project – most maps of the Roman road network only include the really major arterial roadways, but of course we’ve long known about many smaller. Even better, they’ve released a handy, easy to use map model of their research which you can use online, where you can click on any road segment and get a neat summary of what we have about it – if the location is secure or conjectured, if it has a name, what sources we have for it, etc. Visualizing not just the presence of roads but the density of them in certain areas really does help remind us that Roman power (and population) was not uniformly dense.
I'm actually kind of surprised to see how far the roads extend into Fezzan (southwestern region of modern Libya), as most maps of the Roman Empire's road networks that I've seen (including this...
I'm actually kind of surprised to see how far the roads extend into Fezzan (southwestern region of modern Libya), as most maps of the Roman Empire's road networks that I've seen (including this one on Wikipedia) only show it as running along the coastal regions of North Africa. I suppose Wikipedia needs some updating if the itiner-e map is actually the more accurate and up-to-date one.
Edit: Ah, nevermind. After exploring a bit more thoroughly, almost all of the minor roads there are marked as "Hypothetical", which I assume is one step further removed from being evidence based than even the "Conjectured" ones shown elsewhere (?). That's actually a bit disappointing and potentially incredibly misleading too, IMO.
My last name is Ledesma, it comes from a Spanish town of the same name that dates back to Roman times and was originally called Bletisama. It’s really cool to see it on this map. (lon: -5.9986,...
My last name is Ledesma, it comes from a Spanish town of the same name that dates back to Roman times and was originally called Bletisama. It’s really cool to see it on this map. (lon: -5.9986, lat: 41.0911)
Here is Bret Devereaux's description:
I'm actually kind of surprised to see how far the roads extend into Fezzan (southwestern region of modern Libya), as most maps of the Roman Empire's road networks that I've seen (including this one on Wikipedia) only show it as running along the coastal regions of North Africa. I suppose Wikipedia needs some updating if the itiner-e map is actually the more accurate and up-to-date one.
Edit: Ah, nevermind. After exploring a bit more thoroughly, almost all of the minor roads there are marked as "Hypothetical", which I assume is one step further removed from being evidence based than even the "Conjectured" ones shown elsewhere (?). That's actually a bit disappointing and potentially incredibly misleading too, IMO.
My last name is Ledesma, it comes from a Spanish town of the same name that dates back to Roman times and was originally called Bletisama. It’s really cool to see it on this map. (lon: -5.9986, lat: 41.0911)