Some background : I was going through the TV channels and saw a show about Ashoka, in the scene where I stopped, a girl was walking on a very modern looking, metalled road.
My questions:
That was a glitch right? Or were there really metalled roads during that time period?
If no, then what were the transportation methods available to the common masses?
IIRC the Indus Valley civilization had tiled pavements and walkways. Was it possible for leveled, concrete and tar produced roads (the steam roller pressed kinds we have today) to be made during the Mauryan Empire?
This is my first time posting here. Apologies if I broke any rule or formatting guidelines.
No, the show you saw was wrong. I suspect it was the popular Indian TV series on Ashoka, which is a soap opera set in ancient times, not a historical work. Archaeological records show that Indian roads at the time were paved with stone, typically elevated for drainage.
The Mauryans were prolific road builders responsible for the construction of thousands of roads, but none had metaled surfaces, none were asphalted and pressed with steam rollers. We have descriptions of some of them from Megasthenes, who visited India as ambassador to Seleucus Nikator, and wrote an account in his book Indika. He mentions the forerunner of the Grand Trunk Road, which is one of India’s oldest and longest roads that still exists.
It extended more or less east-west from Afghanistan to the mouth of the Ganges, a distance of about 2,000 miles. There are no descriptions of the surface of the road, but there are many mentions of its other marvels – broad, tree-lined, distance markers placed every half-kos (about 1.25 miles) apart, wells dug at every kos for water, signposts where subsidiary roads branched off, hostelries and resting places at regular intervals for travelers. He says that typical trade roads were 32 feet wide, while Royal roads such as the Grand Trunk Road were 64 feet wide. Most of all he mentions the traffic on the road, about caravans with all kinds of trade goods from far off places that could travel uninterrupted from the Khyber Pass to the mouth of the Ganges.