The oldest known constructed roadways are the stone-paved streets of the city-state of Ur, relationship to circa 4000 BCE and timber roads leading through the swamps of Glastonbury, England, relationship to across the same time period. The first long-distance highway, which came into use around 3500 BCE, spanned 1,500 miles from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, but was not paved and was solely partially maintained. In around 2000 BCE, the Minoans on the Greek island of Crete built a fifty-kilometer (thirty-mile) road leading from the palace of Gortyn on the south facet of the island, via the mountains, …