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One thing that I believe is wrong in this video; this is the last scene from the movie, where he is, "returning home" to his dead wife and son. He returned from Germany to find them murdered.
Other than that.
Some quick thoughts. Major Roman roads were paved with cobblestone and maintained for the easy passage of troops. Dirt road wear is uneven, but stop and consider - an oxen pulled cart (horses weren't commonly used for the task back then) will have the hooves both pressing down the dirt and kicking it up. Cart wheels were narrow and loaded carts heavy. The ruts in the cobblestones of old Roman roads are easily seen, and the ruts ARE more depressed than the center, except where the road has a center drain. Manure in the road center makes a nice bed for grass to grow. Cart wheels don't provide manure and compacted soil doesn't grow things well, especially when the compaction is ongoing. Perhaps the professor never visited a farm?
The wheels of a full cart exert more pressure on a road than the hooves of a draft animal, though the forces may be the same. But ultimately, either can prohibit grass from growing due to frequently compressing the road's soil. Also, a walking animal exerts kinetic friction by slightly rubbing its hooves along the ground as it traipses, which can be more destructive to grass than simply pushing down upon it.
So then, the hooves of a draft animal can easily prevent grass from growing along the center of a road.
Just about anything is possible, however in old photos of the family farm, before automobiles, the visible indications are - cow trails, often like contour lines on hillsides, trails between pasture and barn, generally single width, and paths to crop and hay fields, which were double ruts from the wagons.
That just set me to thinking about the idea of a single animal cart being most common, as the prof. asserts. I question that as well. In and near cities and large towns, that might be the case. On a working farm, and in the case of heavily loaded carts, two animals is pretty standard. In any event, the author of the video is making some wild claims that seem reasonable on the surface, but don't hold up to scrutiny.
Gladiator was a horrible horrible film, so he could likely have picked any scene and found problems. What he describes are loosely grouped under the heading of "continuity errors", and movies are rife with them. I think IMDB or some other site has tons of ones that people have noticed and written in.
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Actually, these kinds of errors are more often classified as Anachronisms.
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