Sea routes & land roads

This paper is one of eleven articles in the series “Mastering Postal History” that describe how envelopes and other postal artifacts can be used as original source documents for researching the humanities and the social sciences.

Seafaring vessels have been around for a very, very long time. Would you believe they have been around longer than human beings? Homo sapiens showed up about 125,000 years ago, but another part of the family, Homo erectus, evolved over a million years ago. They wandered northward and eastward over the land masses connected to Africa until they bumped into the Pacific Ocean. It would appear Homo erectus wasn’t big on long distance swimming. So somewhere between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago, one of them decided to build the first boat. The island of Flores is located off the coast of southeast Asia between Java and Australia. And that is where evidence was found confirming when and where our ancient ancestors invented the boat.

While there is much more to ship mail postal history than routes, this article is devoted to researching seaborne routes. From a postal history standpoint, knowing the route will facilitate determining both the means of transport and the applicable rate(s).

The very first transatlantic letter was carried by Christopher Columbus on his initial trip to the New World. It was sent by the Catholic Monarchs to the King of Cipango (Japan), where it was believed Columbus would reach. Mail has been an important part of ship travel ever since that time. Throughout history, monarchs have recognized the importance of postal systems to controlling their empires. Indeed, as colonial empires spread worldwide, ship mail became an integral component of imperial ambitions.

The burgeoning of the British colonies in North America, including the West Indies, was accompanied by growing commercial intercourse across the North Atlantic. It is worth noting that one of the most useful research sources for understanding the evolution of ship mail is to consult histories of British postal regulations as well as those of other nations.

There are several lessons to be learned from studying ship routes. But I believe the major takeaway is that from the earliest times of maritime mail, separate systems worked remarkably well in ensuring that the posts moved expeditiously from start to finish.

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18:20- 18:40
Mετακινήσεις δημητριακών και ανθρώπινες μετακινήσεις.
"Η Εύβοια και ο Ευβοϊκός κόλπος ως θαλάσσια εμπορική οδός και η σημασία τους για την
παραγωγή και διακίνηση σιτηρών κατά τον 5ο και 4ο αιώνα π.Χ."
Aλέξανδρος-Νεκτάριος Ιω. Βασιλείου-Δαμβέργης, Dr. Κλασικής Αρχαιολογίας- Φιλόλογος,
καθηγητής Β/βάθμιας εκπαίδευσης.
Cereal motions and human movements.
"Evia and the Gulf of Evia as a maritime trade route and their importance for the production
and distribution of cereals in the 5th and 4th centuries BC"
Alexandros- Nektarios Vasileiou -Damvergis, Dr., Archaeologist. Philologist / Secondary education
teacher.

The Great Barrier Reef has an iconic position in the history of Australia's maritime sea routes. Louis-Antoine de Bourgainville in 1768 failed to be the first recorded European to sight the east coast of Australia because the Reef was in the way; Captain Cook in 1770 famously ran the Endeavour onto it and survived; Matthew Flinders, P.P. King and a raft of later naval hydrographers surveyed its labyrinthine passages, and many ships have been wrecked upon it. Shipping inside the reef became the lifeline to all central and north Queensland coastal towns, but a complex system of Pilotage and ship tracking has had to be introduced to protect the shipping from the Coral and the reef itself from the ships. At the same time the main shipping routes run through the middle of a world famous tourist destination and a highly sensitive reef ecosystem. It is estimated that by 2020 some 7,800 ships will travel to and from the 10 major trading ports along the reef each year, over half of them carrying Queensland's coal exports. The routes they have to follow are narrow and tortuous, winding their way through a World Heritage Listed Marine National Park. The paper looks at the long and unusual history of the Great Barrier Reef route, its significance to communities along it, and more broadly to Queensland and Australia.

Il traffico internazionale della droga sfrutta in prevalenza, un mezzo di trasporto molto noto e ampiamente utilizzato fin dai tempi antichi: le navi. Il mare fin dai tempi più remoti ha costituito la via privilegiata per gli scambi commerciali, così come lo è oggi: è il pilastro più importante per tutto il commercio mondiale, dato che il 90% dei traffici commerciali globali transitano via mare. La movimentazione dei container, ogni anno regolarmente batte il record dell'anno precedente: vi è una crescita annua del 5% circa, pari a 850 milioni di TEU movimentati globalmente. Gli esperti di settore stimano che nel 2019 sarà necessaria una capacità ricettiva aggiuntiva dei porti mondiali di (almeno) altri 170 milioni di TEU, in prospettiva si sta andando verso la quota di 1 miliardo di TEU movimentati annualmente. Il traffico sostenuto dai porti commerciali viene valutato con un parametro chiamato TEU, (acronimo di Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit cioè unità equivalente a venti piedi). Il TEU costituisce la misura standard di volume nel trasporto dei container secondo la normativa internazionale ISO, nella pratica un singolo TEU corrisponde a circa 40 metri cubi totali.

For some time now, a European Union-wide design philosophy for inner city shopping and high streets known as Shared Space has been fully incorporated in German and Dutch regulations. Shared Space project implementation already has affected city planning of sensitive streets and open spaces. Mutual agreement among motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians concerning the widest possible elimination of traffic controls, light signals, and signing forms the basis of the measures. Case study investigation reveals that improved traffic safety might generally be achieved. Conflicts have also arisen at the same time, revealing the requirements and limits on the range of applications. The authors examine views on Shared Space, provide case studies, define and classify Shared Space, and discuss the effects and evaluations of Shared Space.

Public private partnership (PPP) is a generic term for a relationship formed between the public and private sectors, often with the aim of using private sector resources and/or expertise to help provide and deliver public sector assets and service. PPP is the term used to describe a wide variety of working arrangements in partnerships considered loose, informal, and strategic to implement design, build, finance, and operate type service contracts and formal joint venture companies. The 65 kilometer Attica Tollway in Greece is used as a PPP case study. The authors describe the tollway's history and development; project financing; tollway success; and new Greek PPPs. Inserts highlight the key stakeholders in the Attica Tollway and new Greek concession projects.

Extracted from text ... Text Dr Johann AndersenMD of TechsoImmediate past president of SASITS johann@techso.co.za e-Transport Smart solutions for new world economies THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL conference of the South African Society for Intelligent Transport Systems (SASITS), held from 10 to 13 May in Cape Town, has raised hopes for addressing various transport challenges that face South Africa. ITS is an interdisciplinary profession that developed from the convergence of traffic engineering, information technology and telecommunication. It arose from the dire need to look at the world's growing transportation problems with fresh eyes. The focus of the conference was to promote the deployment of ..

At Myrina Kastro, natural rock formations are combined to artificial, carved complexes diachronically (late prehistory – antiquity). Physical environment and landscape are instrumental in selecting a place, both for human practical needs and symbolic behaviours. Besides having obvious maritime associations, coasts are transition zones, which may also constitute a feature of uncommonly rugged topography, both then merging material and intangible inferences.

ABSTRACT India got its independence carrying a legacy of around 90 percent of its people living in rural areas, with around 15 percent of the people literate, more than 80 percent population dependent on traditional farming with massive poverty, poor infrastructure, unbalance regional development and backwardness. At the time of independence, sustainable socio-economic development was the utmost priority of the national government. Infrastructure development was obviously a very important component of development. Agriculture continues to be a fundamental instrument for sustainable development and poverty reduction. The vision of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam of a developed India by 2020 cannot be expected without the development of rural areas as it constitutes 68.84 percent according to the census 2011 (provisional). There is lack of basic infrastructure like roads, transport, power, water supply and sanitation, irrigation, telecommunication, education and health services, etc. in rural villages. Elimination of poverty, ignorance, diseases, inequality of opportunities and providing a better and higher quality of life were the basic premises upon which all the plans and blue-prints of development were built. Many programmes like Indira Awas Yojana, Swarnjayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, Bharat Nirman, Central Rural Sanitation Programme, National Rural Health Mission, etc. were initiated by the government to boost infrastructure development. These programmes did not achieve much success in addressing the infrastructure deficit. The government is only restructuring and combining the programmes like Integrated Rural Development Programme and allied programmes i.e. Training of Rural Youth for Self Employment, Ganga Kalyan Yojana, Million Wells Scheme, etc. to Swarnjayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana which was again restructured to National Rural Livelihood Mission to reduce the poverty and improving the quality of life. There is lot of corruption in government initiated programmes and schemes, lack of expertise, absence of coordination and allocation of meagre funds from central, state and local government. Public Private Partnerships (PPP) can supplement the infrastructure deficit as well as sustainable development of rural areas. In the beginning, PPP technique was restricted to the road sector. Presently, the government is resorting to this arrangement in areas such as education, health, transport, power, water supply and sanitation, irrigation, telecommunication and other related infrastructure services to underpin both accelerated sustainable infrastructure development and improved service delivery. As of August 2012, 881 PPP projects have been initiated and most projects are in education, health, roads and power. It helped in revolutionising telecommunication, connecting rural roads with state and national highways, educational, power, water supply and sanitation in rural areas. The government amended many policies for implementing PPP projects, but it still faces people’s protest against land acquisition and user charges (tolls), lack of incentives given by governments to private players in rural areas, no fast track approval of projects and many projects are urban centred. PPP can be profitably harnessed to reinforce India’s position on the world map.