gave a rider greater stability and greater control of his mount.
In about 380 b.c.e. the Chinese made a stirrup of metal rather
than leather. It allowed a rider to stand up in his or her stir-
rups and provided enough stability that an archer could shoot
accurately while riding. Until this innovation chariots had
been the best mobile platform for archers. Th e Scythians also
introduced the use of a blanket for padding under a saddle;
the Chinese modifi ed this idea by padding the saddle itself.
Th e Chinese were probably the inventors of the double
shaft for vehicles, introducing two-wheeled carts with double
shaft s and one horse. Th e shaft of a cart or wagon is a pole
extending forward, to which animals are hitched so that they
can pull the vehicle. Before the introduction of the double
shaft , carts had one shaft. A single shaft , however, required
two draft animals, one on each side of the shaft , because a
single animal would naturally pull the shaft toward the side
to which it was attached. Th e double shaft had poles to each
side of one draft animal, allowing it to pull a cart and keep
it in a straight line. Aft er 100 b.c.e. double-shaft ed carts be-
came common in China.
Despite the great advances in technology, much trans-
portation of goods was still a matter of humans carrying
loads. China had many regions where the only roads were
merely footpaths. Sometime around the fi rst century c.e. an
unknown Chinese inventor introduced the wheelbarrow. Es-
sentially a small human-powered cart, this humble vehicle
soon became an invaluable tool for transportation, carrying
goods not only along country lanes but through the narrow
streets of big cities as well, hauling tools and produce between
fi elds and homes and moving countless tons of supplies and
raw materials for the building of roads, dams, and other pub-
lic projects.EUROPE
BY MICHAEL J. O’NEAL
During the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and most of the Neo-
lithic periods people in Europe traveled mainly by foot. In
most cases they did not travel great distances, but some-
times they went on long treks. Th e frozen so-called Iceman
found in the Alps in 1991 was traveling north from Italy,
perhaps to escape pursuers, and was crossing the Alps when
he died around 3300 b.c.e. Rivers and large lakes posed ob-
stacles, and dugout canoes were the best means of crossing
these bodies of standing water. Wetlands were crossed with
wooden trackways.
In northern Europe skis were used by travelers at a very
early date. Th ey were probably invented in many diff erent
places once people began to adapt to modern climatic condi-
tions aft er the ice age. Skis were found preserved in a bog in
Hoting, Sweden, dating back some 4,500 years, and hundreds
of others have been found throughout Scandinavia. Further,
a 4,500-year-old rock carving depicting a man skiing with a
hunting weapon in his hands has been found on the island of
Rodoy in northern Norway, and numerous other rock carv-ings illustrate groups of people on skis. Russian researchers
found skis in the Altay region of central Asia that are at least
6,000 years old. Th e word for ski is similar in language com-
munities as distant as Finland and Siberia, suggesting that
skis were developed across most of Eurasia very long ago.
During the fourth millennium b.c.e. two developments
had a profound eff ect on transportation in prehistoric Europe:
the domestication of the horse and the invention of the wheel.
Around 3500 b.c.e. the inhabitants of the steppes (vast, open
grasslands) of eastern Europe and western Asia began to keep
horses as livestock, initially just for food. Th ey subsequently dis-
covered that horses could be ridden. Archaeological evidence
includes bit marks on teeth found in horse skeletons from the
third millennium b.c.e., though saddles were not used until af-
ter the fall of the Roman Empire and the stirrup was a still later
innovation. Th e domestication of the horse and the invention
of horse riding had an enormous impact on the mobility of the
peoples of Eurasia. It enabled them to migrate over immense
distances. It transformed warfare. In particular, it contributed
to the spread of the Indo-European language, the ancient com-
mon tongue from which numerous languages in Europe and
parts of the Middle East and Asia descended.
Skis and the horse can transport one person, but they are
of little use in transporting goods or agricultural produce. To
that end, Europeans discovered that they could use animals to
pull wagons, carriages, and carts. Th e earliest European wag-
ons, which date to the end of the fourth millennium b.c.e., were
clumsy, lumbering vehicles. Th ey were probably fi rst pulledHorse harness fi ttings from Iron Age Britian (1–100 c.e.) (© Th e
Trustees of the British Museum)1116 transportation: Europe0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1116 1116 10/10/07 2:31:08 PM