Ancient Mayas Travelled Via Concrete Road
Unearth Concrete Highways Built by Mayas in Mexico In 410 A.D.

S8intcom: After telling us all about the high tech of this wonderful highway; 30 to 34 feet wide, scientists conclude that it must have been only for foot traffic since the Maya did not have wheeled vehicles or beasts of burden. The Maya certainly had the wheel as we have many examples of wheels on Mayan toys. Who builds a 34 wide, 60-mile long concrete road for foot traffic?

Gettysburg Times - Oct 4, 1933 By F. B. Colton (Associated Press Science Writer

Washington—If an American motorist could be transported back 1,500 years to the time when the mighty lost empire of the Maya is believed to have flourished in southern Mexico, he could easily have toured it in his car over first-class concrete roads.

These roads, better than any built in modern America until the coming of the automobile, still criss-cross the region which is now deserted. One of them, running more than 60 miles straight across country, has been surveyed and explored for the first time by an expedition of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Roads Easily Traced

Though built about the time when Alaric the Goth was sacking Rome with his barbarian hordes, in 410 A.D., the roads still can be easily traced through the jungle that cover them and the ruins of the cities that they connected.
Experts say the Maya roads are fully as good as the famous highways of the ancient Romans. The line explored by the Carnegie Institute expedition, headed by Alfonso Villa, runs in practically a straight line 62 ½ miles from Yaxuna to Coba.
30 Foot Road

This road is from 30 to 34 feet wide, raised from two to eight feet above the level of the surrounding country. The old Maya engineers dug down to hardpan along the road’s route, and built retaining walls of large limestone blocks set in mortar on either side to the height to which they wished to bring the road surface.

Between the walls was first laid a layer of huge boulders, two to three feet long and weighing hundreds of pounds, with the spaces chinked with smaller stones. Successively smaller layers of stones were laid on top of the boulders, then a layer of fine broken stone rolled or pounded into a hard, level surface, and finally a smooth coating of mortar cement.

Along this road Villa’s expedition found what is probably America’s first road roller, a stone cylinder 13 feet long, weighing five tons, and antedating by 1,500 years the steamroller of today. It probably was rolled about by slaves or war captives of the Maya in road surfacing.

The roads must have been built for human foot-traffic only, scientists believe, for the Maya had no wheeled vehicles as did the Romans, or burden-carrying animals as did the Incas who built roads in South America.

 
s8intcom: This Maya toy-(well they don't call ir Mayan but it is from Mexico during the timespan of the Mayan civilization. 
 

Dog on Wheeled Platform, LACMA

Mexico, Veracruz, 450–650 AD

Ceramics

Ceramic with postfire applied pigment

2 7/8 x 4 in. (7.3 x 10.16 cm)

Gift of Constance McCormick Fearing (AC1996.146.40)

Art of the Ancient Americas

Not currently on public view

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