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[quote user="Semper Vaporo"] The purpose?  To keep carts on the straight and narrow.  As I described in a previous post, the Grecian market was "stocked" at night because carts and animals were not allowed in the area during the day when people (shoppers) were there,  They didn't have mercury vapor lamps to illuminate the area for the delivery boys pushing carts around.  In the dark the carts would go where they were supposed to and not wander into unknown/unwanted places. Cart full of goods are hard to push AND steer at the same time, so a track provided guidance while the worker provided the motive power.  Same for roads and other places were a track would keep the carts going where they were supposed to go.[/quote] My main point is that whiles we trace railroad gage back to the ruts, I would not only trace gage back to the ruts, but I would trace railroads back to the ruts as well.  However, this would have railroads originating in practice before anyone knew of what to use them for.  Oddly, this would mean that the concept for our modern railroads was born unconsciously a long time before anybody knew what to do with it.  I would say that the ruts became true railroads once they developed sufficiently to capture the random tracking of wagons, and began guiding the wheels.  Although, this must have been seen as an irritating road defect rather than the birth of a useful invention. I think the premise that the ruts comprised the first railroads is actually stronger than the premise that standard gage originated with the ruts.  As you say, the ruts were not exact in form, and therefore unlikely to indicate a gage precise enough for railroad practice.  But perhaps, we have actual wagon wheel track dimension is available in the historical record.  That part seems unclear in the great gage origination legend. However, your information that some of what might be regarded as wheel ruts were actually intentional grooves intended to act as tramways is new information to me.  I would like to know about the recorded history of that.  If that is true, it would seem to mean that the Roman chariots and wagons wearing ruts were inconsequential to either the origin of railroads, or the origin of gage.  I looked up the Diolkos Wagonway mentioned in a post above by narig01.  That is said to be the first application of the railroad principle, and it originated in 600 B.C.  So that would mean that the wagon ruts in the roads were inconsequential to the origin of the railroad concept, since they date much later than the Dilokos Wagonway.  Interestingly the Diolkos Wagonway was a railroad with plain wheels running in grooves.  So it had the flanges on the rails, in effect.  So I have to modify my theory of railroads originating unintentionally with worn ruts.  Clearly the concept was used intentionally in 600 B.C.  Interestingly the Diolkos Wagonway was in operation 3 ½ times longer than the entire history of railroading in the United States. A brief description of the Diolkos Wagonway is here: <a href="http://www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=121653">http://www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=121653</a>
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