eli5, Before GPS how did they make perfectly round roads?

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Regents park in London has an inner circle over a hundred years old, it is a perfect circle approximately 1km in circumstance with uneven terrain and lots of trees.

I am sure many other cities have similar large perfect circular roads.

Eli5 How did they ‘draw’ the road on this scale before building it?

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A circle with a 1 km circumference (not circumstance) is less than 160 meters in radius. Surely you can envision surveyors using a 160 meter rope to plot a few hundred points that are equidistant from a fixed center, can’t you?

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