The oldest paved road you can walk in Europe is the Minoan Royal Road in Crete, Greece, which is over 3.500 years old. The road included side drains to handle water runoff, a feature that helped preserve its structure by preventing water damage [603×920]

[https://greekreporter.com/2024/11/18/3500-years-old-minoan-road/](https://greekreporter.com/2024/11/18/3500-years-old-minoan-road/)

I once did an interview for a job opening as designer at an engineering firm’s department that does road design. I didn’t have any civil engineering degree, but I did have batchelor in both mechanical engineering and ain archeaology.

So their first question in the interview was, what do you know about road design? How would you design roads?

So I told I don’t know about modern roads, but I do know how Roman roads were designed, with different layers of gravel/stone having different functions etc. So I drew that on the whiteboard.

He was impressed, basically the only thing I missed were these side drainage ditches/parts….

Road designs are still the same as 2000+ years ago.