I was reading "Barbarian" by Terry Jones, which describes how Roman roads are Gallic, or built by them, before the Roman's. This book paints the romans as essentially taking credit for others: how true is this throughout roman history?
Jones' question is "how come the Romans built roads and the Celts didn't?" and then explains that of course the Celts did build roads, but they have been forgotten or ignored. "And now we call Roman roads 'roads', and the surviving Celtic roads 'causeways' or 'trackways' - not roads at all, just some Barbarian track."
This is a bit...disingenuous, maybe. The point of the book is to prove that “barbarians” were notable civilizations on their own, which is true, and it’s good to point that out. He’s certainly right that it’s sometimes a question of terminology, and that sometimes history is influenced by the prejudices of people who would like to look to the past as some sort of Roman utopia.
But at the same time, no one's really hiding the truth about non-Roman roads, like it’s some weird historian conspiracy, which is what books like Jones’ always seem to be implying. Even in his brief description, you can see that he's talking about different kinds of roads. Surely there's a difference between a dirt track and a paved road?
Here's what Lionel Casson had to say about it:
“The Romans learned the art of roadbuilding from excellent teachers, the Etruscans…The Etruscans never went beyond well-graded, drained, and carefully surfaced dirt roads. The Romans went one key step further: they added paving. It had long been known, for the Near East had used it for centuries for short distances in special areas. Rome used it for mile upon mile of her major highways.”
In the eastern part of the empire,
“Rome’s engineers did not have to bother with new construction so much as improve and consolidate what the Assyrians, Persians and Greeks had built long before.”
In the west,
“There were the tracks used by the Gallic tribes to follow, but much work was needed to bring them up to Roman standards.”
(Casson, Travel in the Ancient World, pg. 163-165)
So, of course the Romans didn't invent the concept of roads. There were tracks and roads that long predated them. They didn't even invent the concept of paved stone roads with drainage. But they did lay down thousands of miles of paved stone roads. Sometimes they followed the path of an ancient dirt road/track, but sometimes not. It’s really just a matter of scale - others had already done what the Romans did, just not as much of it.