The First Bridges

Before there were bridges, every river was a border.

A fallen tree. A line of stepping stones. Then, slowly, humanity learned to build its way across — granite clappers on Dartmoor, Romes wooden Pons Sublicius that could be taken apart in war, Trajans mile-long bridge over the Danube, Chinas floating bridges and iron chains, the grass-rope spans of the Inca rebuilt by hand every year, and the inhabited stone street that was Old London Bridge, complete with houses, shops and a chapel mid-river.

The First Bridges tells that story one crossing at a time: forty chapters, each devoted to a single bridge, builder or technique, and to the people whose lives changed the day the crossing held.

Inside youll discover

• How Caesar built a bridge over the Rhine in ten days — to make a point

• How a Roman arch carries, and why Pons Fabricius (62 BCE) is still walked on today

• Trajans Bridge over the Danube and the Zhaozhou Bridge of Li Chun

• Qeswachaka, the last Inca rope bridge, rewoven every June for five centuries

• Bridge chapels, hermits, toll keepers, devils-bridge legends and bridge law

• Why bridges fall — flood, ice, scour and neglect — and the lessons written in stone

Who this book is for

Readers of narrative history who love how things were built; walkers, travellers and museum-goers who have stood on an old bridge and wondered who put it there; and anyone curious about the crossings that remade trade, pilgrimage and war.

Nathaniel Arkwright writes narrative histories of engineering and everyday life in the ancient and medieval world.

Cross the river the way the old world learned to — one bridge at a time.