The First Waggons and Carts—from the Tigris to the Severn

Abstract

At the end of the 12th century A.D. Henry II sent a substantial portion of the provisions and gear for his invasion of Ireland from Abingdon and Oxford to Bristol by cart. At the beginning of the 12th century B.C. a migrating horde from the north conveyed its household goods, women and children to the frontiers of Egypt in ox carts. No doubt the wide alluvial plains of Hither Asia, even before goats and charcoal-burners had stripped them of their parkland vegetation, were more congenial to the use of wheeled vehicles for long distance transport than the temperate forests of Britain and Cis-Alpine Europe. Still even in Asia, I suspect, the first economic use of wheeled vehicles was for the carriage of bulky foodstuffs from the fields, where they were grown, to the settlements, where they were stored and consumed, and of farmyard manure in the opposite direction. It was in this way by allowing a larger population to be fed at a single centre that the invention of the wheel contributed to the Urban Revolution in Mesopotamia. (In Egypt, where all cultivable land lies close to the Nile, boats took the place of carts).