Kelio istorija

Abstract

The second part of the article was prepared using the material collected by foreign and Lithuanian authors. The first artificial road pavement could be a twig deck in the wood or marshland. The researchers could judge about ancient road constructions only from archaeological excavations and findings. The world road history tells that the slave-owning society used roads for trade, war purposes, cult processions and approaching the building sites. The Roman Empire had a very dense network of roads. At those times road builders used 10 times more stone material for road construction than nowadays, and the labour force was very cheap. After break-up of the Roman Empire the road building stopped and the previously built roads were neglected. Road building recovered only in the late Middle Ages when the Roman roads were being copied. Yet, there was felt a shortage of stone materials and labour force. For this reason, the road paving constructions became lighter and at the same time improved. Engineers P. Tresaquet, T. Telford, D.L. McAdam not only suggested various improved road paving constructions, built and repaired roads, but also wrote books about road building and repair. A very distinct stage which had a great impact on road building is the invention of the automobile in 1885. Only after this event the road paving improved dramatically, road builders started to use bitumen, asphalt concrete and cement concrete.