>>1411603For instance, these large highways were originally built for explicitly military purposes. Of course, the civilian function would be the national experience people have with the interstate highways... but going back many centuries if not millennia, it was known by generals that wide malls were more accessible to marching armies than circuitous alleyways which had limited sight... this is part of why Napoleon III rebuilt Paris from its old alley-filled form to the grand avenues and apartment blocks that define it today. A revolt in Paris can be put down by an army much easier, than say... Venice? Bruges? You get the picture.
This mechanism also helps to explain the Phoenician rise to power (aside from their control of the timber trade in antiquity). The Phoenicians were the first global maritime merchant empire and colonized Europe in the 13th century BC, owing part of their success to their island fortress cities which prevented military action from successfully sieging and occupying their cities. The Phoenicians funded the Temple that jews love to worship and pray for the reconstruction of, and presumably, the financier dynasties that own the world stem from Phoenician families, given the linguistic, cultural, genealogical, and other evidence (their alphabet should come to mind, first of all).
