Roads. How it all started

A road built in Egypt by the Pharaoh Cheops around 2500 BC is believed to be the earliest paved road on record – a construction road 1,000 yards long and 60 feet wide that led to the site of the Great Pyramid.

The various trade routes, of course, developed where goods were transported from their source to a market outlet and were often named after the goods which travelled upon them. For example, the Silk Route stretched 8,000 miles from China, across Asia, and then through Spain to the Atlantic Ocean. However, carrying bulky goods with slow animals over rough, unpaved roads was a time consuming and expensive. As a general rule, the price of the goods doubled for every 100 miles they had to travel.

Some other ancient roads were established by rulers and their armies. The Old Testament contains references to ancient roads like the King’s Highway, dating back to 2000 BC. This was a major route from Damascus in Palestine, and ran south to the Gulf of Aqaba, through Syria to Mesopotamia, and finally on to Egypt. Later it was renamed Trajan’s Road by the Romans, and was used in the eleventh and twelfth centuries by the Crusaders.

Later another imperial road, the Royal Road, was being built by the Persians from the Persian Gulf to the Aegean Sea, a distance of 1,775 miles. Around 800 BC, Carthage, on the northern coast of Africa, began to use stones for paving roads. Although they may not have been the first to pave their roads with stones, they were among the earliest, and some people believe that the Romans imitated Carthaginian techniques.

Source: http://www.triplenine.org/articles/roadbuilding.asp