Paver History (Part 1)

Paver Pros in New Jersey has been involved in the custom paver business for years. We find that many people do not know really what pavers actually do. For many, they don’t hear of the term until they are looking at buying a new home, fixing up their current home, or adding a patio, driveway, pool or other addition to their homes and properties.

Essentially, “pave” means to cover a road, path, walkway, etc with a surface such as stones, bricks, tiles or concrete. Paver is the noun form of this action, meaning the business of (profession), person doing or subject in regard to creation of this action of paving. The word paver comes from Latin literally meaning “to ram down.” You can imagine seeing this action of men “ramming” stones down to create old flat brick and stone roads.

In modern terms, pavers have come to specifically mean interlocking concrete, composite or brick flooring. This flooring is generally used outdoors in “hardscaping” areas like pools, walkways, patios, driveways, etc. The bricks themselves are cast and their designs interlock creating unique beautiful patterns and looks. The difference between paver stones/bricks and a normal brick, stone or tile is that these use grout in the joints and usually pavers just lock and set together, again interlocking with each other. Paver stones can be made of many different substances but can include clay, brick, cement and other miscellaneous aggregate compounds.

An example of this over all definition would be, “We hired Paver Pros to install paving stones around the pool and patio, and it looks amazing!”

The history of pavers goes fairly far back in history. We touched on the history above with the definition of paver going back to the Latin word “pavīre.” Since this is the first time the word is used, in modern time, we can see the relationship of where paving first appeared in history (although there are obviously earlier ruins that show paving was done by the oldest civilizations on the planet).

Paver History (Part 2)

Around 130,000 years ago a group of men and women settled on the island of Crete. This group of people would later become known as the Minoans (named in modern times for their king, Minos). They were one of the first known humans on the planet that did not wander but used agriculture and stayed, for the most part, in one spot – and who wouldn’t want to stay in such a beautiful land! This culture lasted thousands and thousands of years and during that time they built incredible palatial palaces, buildings and homes.

Because these structures were more permanent, they needed more permanent roads. To connect these towns and structures, they used segmented stones on top of a bed of sand for roads and pathways, and these are some of the very earliest pavers in known history. This technique is very much the same idea of how paver bricks and stones are laid today!

The Greeks continued to use pavers to create pools, walkways, roads, and to turn unusable, uneven land into usable durable long lasting walkways, paths, social gathering areas, streets, etc. This helped to make Greece’s architecture admired and copied by nearly every civilization in the world, even today! Because of Greece’s proximity to Italy, we find direct influence into the Roman culture from everything from religion and philosophy, to art and architecture.

The Romans took on this program of paving their streets from the Greeks and took it even a step further when they built over 50,000 miles of paved roads that were built so well, many roads like the Appian Way, built in 312 BC by Caesar’s Legions; are still in use today! Those are some serious paver pros that we’ve ever heard! Who would have thought that this idea of using paver stones and brick would come all the way down from history, right into our homes in New Jersey, thousands and thousands of years later.

Paver History Part 3 continued in our blog