Hypothetical Question

If there was no rock or gravel in the world and there never had been any and you wanted to build a road, what would you use as a substitute?

Maybe bricks

And what would you make bricks out of ? Maybe dried dung ?

But the better question, IMO, is what would support any road you might be able to build with any material if there were no rocks ?

Make the bricks out of dried clay

That said I agree white idk with out a rock base what would support the road

bacon

Um.....ok...why might you ask?

Runway grates steel.

Logs

A canal

In this day and age I would remove all of the organic material and lay down a geotextile or geo grid and backfill with
a granular material. Course sand or something and then 6"-8" of soil over that, seed it down and get the best root growth
I could. I assume this is for a woods access road or something? Without a crushed aggregate base course you ain't gonna
support much weight. You could also skip the soil and seeding and mix in fly ash or a liquid base stabilizer into the sand,
water it and compact it and then seal coat it with asphaltic concrete.

Zim

Years ago when drilling in the marshes,swamps and such in Texas, Louisiana & Alabama we used roads and locations made out of wood.
If I remember right we used what was called swamp mats. They were square interlocking mats made out of lumber. Some we bought and some we rented, depending on the circumstance.

One winter while drilling in Colorado it snowed so much that we bought square bales of grass hay and used it on the road to get to and from the rig.. And lots of it.

How will you backfill with sand if there is no rock ?

Shredded tires~

Adobe.

They make awesome houses too. Very well insulated. Cool in the summer warm in the winter.

Well I guess if there is no sand then there never was any rock and the earth would implode and you would not have
any reason to build a road in the first place.

Zim

Adobe contains sand

Coral, like in southern Florida.

How will you make steel without carbon and/or coal ?

OR......how will you shred tires with no steel or rocks ?

Calcium carbonate....marble

So practical

Exactly right ! Without geology we would have no place to stand

Chicken or the egg all over again~

Cheese; after all, the moon is made of it.

Baked clay = pottery, make it thick enough and lay it like cobblestone.

Rammed earth.

Good luck with any longevity however. That's why we use stone , gravel other substrates.

I'm just glad I don't get stoned and worry about things like this

Paper.

tree fiddy

Coral reef ground up

Lots of roads in the north are winter roads only-built on ice.
Its easy to make a road on ice.

clam and oyster shells if you look a some of the old Masonry in Savannah GA and coastal area , it was made with shells as much of the aggregate.

or Ride a horse wouldn't need shoes since there would be nothing hard to protect the hoof from I suppose you could ride a camel also

wait for freeze up and drag everything across frozen ground snow and ice

only live hear water and transport everything by water but that would probably just be a massive swamp full of mud with no aggregate any where in the world

That question was asked in the 1950's by an officer on an Airforce promotion board. The questionee answered: "I don't know, sir." The questioner replied: "I don't know either; I thought maybe you could tell me." Chairman of the promotion board then said: "There could not be a substitute for something that never existed."

Regardless, I have seen mussels shells used on Louisiana coastal area roads.

Silly putty

Carpet...like they use it in the swamps of LA. Over time dirt will accumulate and grass will grow, giving it a solid “base”. No sinking.

Mud......keeps the riff raff out.
Cinders from burned coal. They used to use that on high school tracks. Don't fall down!!!!!!

If you buy all the rocks and gravel, you can corner the market on highway construction.

We once had plank roads.

Bones 🦴

as greencounty said oyster shell is the trick it will last forever and you get to eat the oysters first.

Town where I went to high school had several streets that were two layers of brick. Built in the early 1900s and I’ll bet are still there today.