A vast network of dozens of Roman army camps has been found in the mountainous region of northern Spain.
The camps show how large the Roman army was about 2,000 years ago during the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.
“They reveal the intense activity of the Romans at the entrance to the Cantabrian Mountains during the final phase of the Roman conquest of Hispania,” said Joe Fante, a landscape archaeologist at the University of Exeter in England Said in a statement.
Camps set up for training and shelter The remains of 66 camps were discovered using remote-sensing technology. They range from small castles of a few thousand square feet to huge fortifications of 37 acres (1 hectare) and help explain how the Romans succeeded in their 200-year war to conquer the Iberian Peninsula from the natives.
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These camps housed a large number of soldiers so they could attack local residents from different directions.
“These temporary settlements were set up by the Roman army while passing through hostile territory or maneuvering around their permanent bases,” Fonte said. They were strategically placed to help ride in the cold winter months without leaving their posts.
One of the main objectives of the bloody conquest was to gain access to the area’s natural resources, such as. Tin And Gold.
“We’ve identified a lot of sites because we’ve used different types of remote sensing,” Fonte said. The team analyzed aerial photography and satellite images, including Google Earth, created 3D models of the terrain and used drones to map the area.
Most of the sites were found nearby where the Romans later established important towns.
The findings on December 2 were detailed in the journal Geology.
Published on Original Living Science.
