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Roman Roads (2017)

sashamaps.net

11–20 of 166 posts

Re: Roman Roads (2017)

#11
post #7

How can it take 2 months on foot, yet only 1 month per horse, when a horse can only travel between 25-35 miles a day, which is not twice as far as a human can travel in a day, but about equal?

I'm sure the author would have more details on the ambiguity. Are the walkers marching soldiers? Is the rider a courier who changes to fresh horses at waystations? It's not clear :)

Re: Roman Roads (2017)

#12
post #7

How can it take 2 months on foot, yet only 1 month per horse, when a horse can only travel between 25-35 miles a day, which is not twice as far as a human can travel in a day, but about equal?

Relay horses

Re: Roman Roads (2017)

#13
post #4

The original creator's page is: https://sashamaps.net/docs/maps/roman-roads-original/ The summary here links right to the original content. I just wanted to highlight the original for the sake of other readers clicking through quickly. There's also a much more detailed (and more interesting) writeup on the creator's page.

Their other maps are sick too. Is there a term for these types of visualizations, where some data is visualized in a "non-standard" way in the context of the data?

Re: Roman Roads (2017)

#15
I've been always fascinated by subway maps. The best ones are usually made manually and require update from contractors on every infrastructure extension. Were there any efforts to make autogenerated styled subway maps? Not like stylization of OSM data, but real schemes that show the whole system without sensory overload?

Re: Roman Roads (2017)

#16

Sometimes I wonder if we've regressed in terms of attention to quality. Here in the US, I see lots of potholes on the streets and sidewalks. Meanwhile, the ancient cobblestone roads are still functional to this day.

Drive a semi over those cobblestones daily for a year and we'll see how they are doing.

Re: Roman Roads (2017)

#17

Sometimes I wonder if we've regressed in terms of attention to quality. Here in the US, I see lots of potholes on the streets and sidewalks. Meanwhile, the ancient cobblestone roads are still functional to this day.

Potholes are not regression. They are a good cost effect response. We can build roads that won't have potholes, but at vastly more cost, it is better in the long run to build roads as we do and then fix potholes every year.

Cobblestones also get potholes and the like when subject to heavy car traffic.

Re: Roman Roads (2017)

#18

I've been always fascinated by subway maps. The best ones are usually made manually and require update from contractors on every infrastructure extension. Were there any efforts to make autogenerated styled subway maps? Not like stylization of OSM data, but real schemes that show the whole system without sensory overload?

Some examples of automatic layout in this style:

- M. Nöllenburg: Automated Drawings of Metro Maps, 2005. We've used that a while ago to render a few pretty images with our graph visualization library, but runtime is prohibitive (along with the requirement of a fast ILP solver).

- LOOM: https://github.com/ad-freiburg/loom and https://loom.cs.uni-freiburg.de/global

Re: Roman Roads (2017)

#19

Sometimes I wonder if we've regressed in terms of attention to quality. Here in the US, I see lots of potholes on the streets and sidewalks. Meanwhile, the ancient cobblestone roads are still functional to this day.

Watch a video on roman road construction methods. It seems they prided themselves on building for the long term. Retrieval augmented generation from incomplete archive: The foundation of the road consists of 3’ of gravel covered with 2’ of sand forming an extremely stable base. I seem to also recall that builders got paid half upon completion and half if the construction was still in good condition fifty years later. (Though this is probably apocryphal for the obvious reasons)

Re: Roman Roads (2017)

#20

Sometimes I wonder if we've regressed in terms of attention to quality. Here in the US, I see lots of potholes on the streets and sidewalks. Meanwhile, the ancient cobblestone roads are still functional to this day.

> Sometimes I wonder if we've regressed in terms of attention to quality.

In a way we have, yes! In our modern society we optimize for profit. Always, everywhere. The reasons our roads won't last thousands of years is precisely that it would be less profitable.

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