The history of road transport started with the development of tracks by humans and their beasts of burden.
Antiquity
The first forms of road transport were pack animals carrying goods over tracks that often followed game trails, such as the Natchez Trace.Lay (1992), p5 In the Paleolithic Age, humans did not need constructed tracks in open country. The first improved trails would have been at fords, mountain passes and through swamps.Lay (1992), p7 The first improvements would have consisted largely of clearing trees and big stones from the path. As commerce increased, the tracks were often flattened or widened to accommodate human and animal traffic. Some of these dirt tracks were developed into fairly extensive networks, allowing communications, trade and governance over wide areas. The Inca Empire in South America and the Iroquois Confederation in North America, neither of which had the wheel, are examples of effective use of such paths.
The first goods transport was on human backs and heads, but the use of pack animals, including donkeys and horses, developed during the Neolithic Age. The first vehicle is believed to have been the travois, a frame used to drag loads, which probably developed in Eurasia after the first use of bullocks (castrated cattle) for pulling plows. In about 5000 BC, sleds developed, which are more difficult to build than travois but are easier to propel over smooth surfaces. Pack animals, ridden horses, and bullocks dragging travois or sleds require wider paths and higher clearances than people on foot, and improved tracks were required.Lay (1992), p25 As a result, by about 5000 BC roads, including the Ridgeway, developed along ridges in England to avoid crossing rivers and bogs.Lay (1992), p9 In central Germany, such ridgeways remained the predominant form of the long-distance road till the mid-18th century.Landau, Georg: Beiträge Zur Geschichte der Alten Heer- und Handelsstraßen in Deutschland, Kassel, Bärenreiter, 1958
Harappan roads Street paving has been found from the first human settlements around 4000 BC in cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation on the Indian subcontinent in modern-day Pakistan, such as Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. Roads in the towns were straight and long, intersecting one another at right angles.
Wheeled transport
Wheels appear to have been developed in ancient Sumer in Mesopotamia around 5000 BC, perhaps originally for the making of pottery. Their original transport use may have been as attachments to travois or sleds to reduce resistance. It has been argued that logs were used as rollers under sleds prior to the development of wheels, but there is no archaeological evidence for this.Lay (1992), p27 Most early wheels appear to have been attached to fixed axles, which would have required regular lubrication by animal fats or vegetable oils or separation by leather to be effective.Lay (1992), p28 The first simple two-wheel carts, apparently developed from travois, appear to have been used in Mesopotamia and northern Iran in about 3000 BC, and two-wheel chariots appeared in about 2800 BC. They were hauled by onagers.
Heavy four-wheeled wagons developed about 2500 BC, which were only suitable for oxen-haulage and therefore were only used where crops were cultivated, particularly Mesopotamia. Two-wheeled chariots with spoked wheels appear to have been developed around 2000 BC by the Andronovo culture in southern Siberia and Central Asia. At much the same time the first primitive harness enabling horse-haulage was invented.
Wheeled transport created the need for better roads. Generally, natural materials cannot be both soft enough to form well-graded surfaces and strong enough to bear wheeled vehicles, especially when wet, and stay intact. In urban areas it began to be worthwhile to build stone-paved streets and, in fact, the first paved streets appear to have been built in Ur in 4000 BC. Corduroy roads (road beds made of logs laid perpendicular to the direction of travel) were built in Glastonbury, England in 3300 BC,Lay (1992), p51 and brick-paved roads were built in the Indus Valley Civilisation from around the same time. 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.Lay (1992), p43 Notably, in about 2000 BC, the Minoans built a paved road from Knossos in northern Crete through the mountains to Gortyn and Lebena, a port on the south coast of the island, which had side drains, a 200 mm thick pavement of sandstone blocks bound with clay-gypsum mortar, covered by a layer of basaltic flagstones and had separate shoulders. This road could be considered superior to any Roman road.Lay (1992), p44
In 500 BC, Darius the Great started an extensive road system for Persia, including the famous Royal Road which was one of the finest highways of its time. The road was used even after Roman times. Because of the road's superior quality and a system of relays, mounted mail couriers could travel in nine days.Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Persian Royal Road". Encyclopedia Britannica, 23 Jun. 2022, Persian Royal Road. Accessed 13 January 2025.
From 268 BC to 22 BC, Ashoka built roads, edicts, water wells, education centers, rest houses and hospitals for humans and animals along the highways across Indian subcontinent and planted trees like banyan and mango groves for the benefit of travelers. The Maurya Empire built the Grand Trunk Road which stretched from modern-day Bangladesh to Peshawar in Pakistan. Its length was around 2,000 miles.Patrick Whelan, 2015, Kaplan AP World History 2016.Andrea L. Stanton, Edward Ramsamy, Peter J. Seybold, 2012, Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa: An Encyclopedia, p 41.Sudeshna Sengupta, 2008, History & Civics 9, page 97.
Roman roads
With the advent of the Roman Empire, there was a need for armies to be able to travel quickly from one area to another, and the roads that existed were often muddy, which greatly delayed the movement of large masses of troops. To solve this problem, the Romans built great roads. These roads used deep roadbeds of crushed stone as an underlying layer to ensure that they kept dry, as the water would flow out from the crushed stone instead of becoming mud in clay soils. The legions made good time on these roads, and some are still used millennia later.
On the more heavily traveled routes, there were additional layers that included six-sided capstones, or pavers, that reduced the dust and reduced the drag from wheels. The pavers allowed the Roman chariots to travel very quickly, ensuring good communication with the Roman provinces. Farm roads were often paved first on the way into town, to keep produce clean. Early forms of springs and shocks to reduce the bumps were incorporated in horse-drawn transport, as the original pavers were not perfectly aligned.
Middle Ages
Roman roads deteriorated in medieval Europe because of a lack of resources and skills to maintain them, but many continued to be used. The alignments are still partially used today, for instance, parts of England's A1. Before the 13th century, there were no organized networks of streets inside cities, merely shifting footpaths. With the invention of the horse harness and wagons with swivelled front axles that could make tight turns, urban street networks stabilized.
In the medieval Islamic world, many roads were built throughout the Arab Empire. The most sophisticated roads were those of Baghdad, Iraq, which were paved with tar in the 8th century. Tar was derived from petroleum accessed from oil fields in the region, through the chemical process of destructive distillation.
Early modern period
As states developed and became richer, especially with the Renaissance, new roads and bridges began to be built, often based on Roman designs. Although there were attempts to rediscover Roman methods, there was little useful innovation in road building before the 18th century.
In 18th century West Africa, road transport throughout the Ashanti Empire was maintained via a network of well-kept roads that connected the Ashanti capital with territories within its jurisdiction and influence. After significant road construction undertaken by the kingdom of Dahomey, toll roads were established with the function of collecting yearly taxes based on the goods carried by the people of Dahomey and their occupation. The Royal Road was built in the late 18th century by King Kpengla which stretched from Abomey through Cana up to Ouidah.
Between 1725 and 1737 General George Wade constructed of road and 40 bridges to improve Britain's control of the Scottish Highlands, using Roman road designs with large stones at the bottom and gravel on top, with a typical overall depth of two metres. They were so poorly aligned and steep, according to Thomas Telford, "as to be unfit for the purposes of civil life" and also rough and poorly drained.Lay (1992), p72
Toll roads
Responsibility for the state of the roads lay with the local parish since Tudor times. In 1656 the parish of Radwell, Hertfordshire petitioned Parliament for help to maintain their section of the Great North Road Road.Webb. English Local Government. pp. 157-159 Parliament passed an act that gave the local justices powers to erect toll gates on a section of the Great North Road, between Wadesmill, Hertfordshire; Caxton, Cambridgeshire; and Stilton, Huntingdonshire for a period of eleven years, and the revenues so raised should be used for the maintenance of the Great North Road in their jurisdictions.Statute 15 Cha. 2. c. 1. The toll gate erected at Wadesmill became the first effective toll gate in England.
The first scheme that had trustees who were not justices was established through a turnpike act in 1707, for a section of the London–Chester road between Fornhill and Stony Stratford. The basic principle was that the trustees would manage resources from the several parishes through which the highway passed, augment this with tolls from users from outside the parishes, and apply the whole to the maintenance of the main highway. This became the pattern for the turnpiking of a growing number of highways, sought by those who wished to improve flow of commerce through their part of a county.
In the early 18th century, sections of the main radial roads into London were put under the control of individual turnpike trusts. The pace at which new turnpikes were created picked up in the 1750s as trusts were formed to maintain the cross-routes between the Great Roads radiating from London. Roads leading into some provincial towns, particularly in western England, were put under single trusts, and key roads in Wales were turnpiked. In South Wales, the roads of complete counties were put under single turnpike trusts in the 1760s. A further surge of trust formation occurred in the 1770s, with the turnpiking of subsidiary connecting roads, routes over new bridges, new routes in the growing industrial areas and roads in Scotland. About 150 trusts were established by 1750; by 1772 a further 400 were established and, in 1800, there were over 700 trusts. In 1825 about 1,000 trusts controlled of road in England and Wales.Hampshire Maps University of Portsmouth. Accessdate 6 December 2012