How Roads Changed The World (Episode 1)

The wheel and the road when put together are perhaps the greatest engineering development of all time. In 2002, Archeologists excavated the ruins of old pile dwellings, houses built on stilts, in the marsh land near the town of Ljubljana in Slovenia. They unearthed a wooden cart-wheel. Radiocarbon revealed that it was over 5000 years old. This wheel was made of ash and the axle made of oak. This remarkable find is considered to be the first wheel in history.

Today, the planet is alive with the sound of rubber on tarmac, with 1.2 billion vehicles moving from place to place, using millions upon millions of kilometres of roads that crisscross the continents. The road has been an extremely important part of the development of the human race and it is considered one of the triumphs of ancient engineering allowing freedom of movement.