Roman roads laid the foundation for modern-day prosperity, study claims
Nov 2022, phys.org
See what they call "the reversal of fortune" - I call it chips vs crisps, like how England would much rather call their potato chips "chips" but they can't because they already call their french fries "chips". I have to copy mostly the whole writeup, just because:
Roman road networks were built not primarily for economic reasons, but to transport troops to different parts of the empire, but soon began to be used for trade and transport, becoming links between emerging market towns and important for economic development.To carry out the study, the researchers superimposed maps of the Roman Empire's road network on top of modern satellite images showing the light intensity at night—one way of approximating economic activity in a geographical area."What makes this study extra interesting is that the roads themselves have disappeared and that the chaos in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire would have been an opportunity to reorient the economic structures. Despite that, the urban pattern remained."Another factor that supports the study's findings is what happened in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire, in North Africa and the Middle East, where wheeled transport was basically abandoned in the 4th–6th centuries to be replaced with camel caravans. The roads in the region were used less and less and were allowed to fall into disrepair. Thus, in contrast to the western parts of the kingdom, new roads were not built on top of the old ones."The roads became irrelevant and thus we don't see the same continuity in prosperity at all. It can be said that the area was affected by what is called a 'reversal of fortune'—countries that early on developed civilization, such as Iraq, Iran and Turkey, are today autocratic and have significantly worse economic development than countries that were then in the economic periphery," says Ola Olsson."In Sweden, for example, we are talking about possibly building new railroad trunk lines. The former, from the 19th century, gained enormous importance for economic activity in Sweden. New stretches for the railroad are discussed, and if they are built you can expect some communities to get a big economic boost."
via Swedish Research Council: Carl-Johan Dalgaard et al, Roman roads to prosperity: Persistence and non-persistence of public infrastructure, Journal of Comparative Economics (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2022.05.003
Image credit: AI Art - Portrait of a Void Engineer Setting Up Samsara Generator by MC Escher and Brecht Evens - 2022
Post Script:
Is there a common sound of swearing across languages?
Dec 2022, phys.org
The initial study revealed that swear words were less likely to include approximants, which include sounds like l, r, w and y. (Not offensive enough.)
Minced Oaths though:
In a following study, the authors also looked at minced oaths—which are variations of swear words deemed less offensive, for example "darn" instead of "damn." The authors found that approximants were significantly more frequent in minced oaths than swear words. The authors propose that this introduction of approximants is part of what makes minced oaths less offensive than swear words.
via University of London: The sound of swearing: Are there universal patterns in profanity?, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (2022). DOI: 10.3758/s13423-022-02202-0
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