Reading
passage One definition of a road is
that it is a way between two places that has been improved in
some way to make travel easier. The first ‘roads’ were simple pathways
that probably followed the routes that animals take as they wander
around the countryside. Roads have a very long history. Streets paved
with stone were built in the Mesopotamian city of Ur some 6,000 years
ago, and corduroy roads (roads created by placing logs side by side)
dated to around the same time have been found in the south of England. Later roads were specifically
constructed to allow faster travel for soldiers, government officials
and eventually traders.
One of the great road builders of ancient times was Darius I, king of
Persia. In 500 BCE,He ordered the construction of the Royal Road that
stretched from Sardis on the western coast of what is now Turkey to
Susa in what is now Iran. On this road, Darius’ mounted messengers
could travel 2,700 kilometers in only seven days using relays of
horses. Probably the greatest road builders of antiquity, however, were
the Romans. Beginning around about 300 BCE, Roman roads were built
mostly by the Roman army as it campaigned against Rome’s enemies, Roman
roads were constructed in as straight a line as possible and were
paved. As the empire expanded, so did the road network and eventually
more than 80,000 kilometers of paved roads crisscrossed the Roman
Empire in Europe, North Africa and the Near East. Roads, however, are
expensive to build and need a strong central government to maintain
them. When the Persian and Roman empires declined, their road networks
declined with them. (275) Listening
passage If roads in ancient times had
been primarily for the use of armies and government business, the
coming of the agricultural and industrial revolutions in Europe in the
18th century created
a need for roads to facilitate trade and the movement of goods and
people from one place to another. This could only be made possible if a
method of constructing roads could be developed that was not impossibly
expensive and produced roads that were useable in all weathers. One of
the first people to do this was a Scottish engineer by the name of John
Macadam, spelt M-A-C-A-D-A-M. Macadam continued the work of earlier
French and English road builders but his breakthrough was to realize
that massive heavy rocks used as a foundation for a road were not
necessary. This made roadbuilding csimpler and cheaper. In the early
19th century, Macadam perfected a road
structure that had three layers. The first layer was made up of stones
of a maximum size of 75 millimeters. This layer was compacted, pushed
together, by a heavy roller. Another identical layer of 75 millimeter
stones was laid down and again compacted. Finally a top layer of
smaller stones of 25 millimeters was added. This kind of road was
known as a ‘macadamised’ road. The most important advantage of
macadamized roads was that they were usable in any kind of weather. The
‘macadamized’ road really was the first ‘modern’ road and
revolutionized road transport. It led to the vast road networks that we
all take for granted today. (244)