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As ever more clues are found by archaeologists, sometimes in unexpected places, we are beginning to see more clearly how our distant ancestors managed to spread across the world.

People power

The first modern humans moved on foot, so they needed to travel light. Infants would be carried. It might occur to people, even before clothing became a necessity, to use animal skin or interwoven lianas to make a sling to carry a baby. Warm clothing was needed in northern Europe, where we can picture palaeolithic people in skins and furs. Further south, flax fibres have been found in a cave used by man in Georgia dating back 30,000 years. People probably used them to make linen and thread for clothes and cords.^{1E. Kvavadze et al, 30,000-Year-Old Wild Flax Fibers, Science, vol. 325, no. 5946 (11 September 2009), p. 1359.}

Hunters would generally butcher large game where it was killed, rather than try to carry a whole beast miles back to camp.^{2A.K. Outram, Economic Anatomy, Element Abundance and Optimality: A New Way of Examining Hunters' Bone Transportation Choices. In: A. Millard (ed.) Proceedings of Archaeological Sciences '97, BAR International Series 939. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports (2001), pp.117 - 126.} Even so it might be convenient to tie or sling game or fish from a stick or a spear, to be carried over the shoulder of one man, or between two men. A sling on a thick pole could also carry an injured comrade. Two poles with skins or lianas strung between them would make a stretcher.

Dragging firewood back to camp with smaller sticks piled on top of a large, forked branch might suggest the the basic A-frame of the travois, used by Plains Indians of North America to drag loads. One example has been found from prehistoric Europe. The same A-frame laid flat and pushed downhill over grass or snow could have originated the concept of the sledge (also called a sled or sleigh) - a platform on runners. Sledges are mentioned in some of the earliest records in the world - clay tablets from Uruk in Mesopotamia. A highly-decorated ceremonial sledge was found in the tomb of Queen Pu-abi of Ur.^{3P. Pétrequin, A.-M. Pétrequin, R.-M. Arbogast, D. Marechal, A. Viellet, Travois et jougs néolithiques du lac de Chalain à Fontenu (Jura, France), in P. Pétrequin, R. Arbogast, A.-M. Pétrequin, S. van Willigen, M. Bailly (eds.), Premiers Chariots, Premiers Araires: La diffusion de la traction animale en Europe pendant les IVe et IIIe millénaires avant notre ère, CRA Monographie 29 (2006), p. 87-105; M. A. Littauer and J. H. Crouwel, ed. Peter Raulwing, Selected Writings on Chariots and other Early Vehicles, Riding and Harness (2002), p.333.} Both ideas probably date far back into prehistory. Since horses were extinct in the Americas before re-introduction by Europeans, the travois was dragged by dogs, once these had been domesticated. Dogs are still used in the far north to pull sledges. Originally people had to rely on their own muscles to drag loads.

Skis in the Old World and snowshoes in North America were a useful aid to getting about over snow. Rock carvings showing men on skis have been found in Norway, Sweden and Russian Karelia. Remarkably, some ancient skis have survived. The oldest skis and sledge runners ever discovered were preserved in peat bogs near Lake Sindor in Russia. They date to around 6,000 BC. Skiing in the Altai Mountains was recorded in a Chinese manuscript over 2,000 years ago. People there still make their own skis.^{4G.M. Burov, Some Mesolithic wooden artifacts from the site of Vis I in the European North East of the U.S.S.R, in C. Bonsall (ed.), The Mesolithic in Europe (1989), pp. 391-401; M.Lund, Skiing in the shadow of Ghengis Khan, Skiing Heritage, June 2009, pp. 32-34.}

Floating along

Those Mesolithic people with a diet heavy in fish, including open water species, must have mastered the art of boat-building. A floating tree-truck probably suggested to many an early traveller a way to cross water. Sitting astride a log was precarious though. They tend to roll the rider off. But several roped together make a raft. Bamboo rafts may have been used by the first people to reach Australia, before 40,000 years ago. (The sea level was much lower then, almost creating a land bridge between South-East Asia and Australia, but some sea crossing was needed.)

A simple boat could be made from a hollowed-out log. Controlled burning could be used to reduce the labour of hollowing out. Wood decays unless preserved by anaerobic conditions such as bogs or deep water, yet hundreds of these dugout canoes have been found. Most are comparatively recent, since such boats continued to be built well into the historic period. A notable exception is the logboat found at Pesse in the Netherlands, radio-carbon-dated to about 8,000 BC - the oldest boat so far found in the world.^{5S. McGrail, Boats of the World: From the Stone Age to Medieval Times (2004), pp. 172-3, 279-81; for the most recent dating of the Pesse boat see http://www.bootvanpesse.nl and http://www.drentsmuseum.nl.}

Similarly the reeds growing beside rivers and lakes will float if a stem is broken off. Ingenious thinkers would see the potential for bundling these together to make a raft, from which more complex reed boats evolved. In Ancient Egypt, where papyrus grew thickly in the Nile Delta and up to 2–3 meters (5–9 ft) tall, river boats were made from them. They are depicted in paintings and models found in the tombs of the wealthy, such as the one shown here, from the Tomb of Meketra at Thebes. But the earliest depiction yet found of a Nile boat is painted on a pebble dating to the early seventh millennium BC. This is about 3000 years earlier than Nile navigation was previously thought to begin, pushing it back into the Mesolithic period.^{6D. Usai and S. Salvatori, The oldest representation of a Nile boat, Antiquity, vol. 81, no. 314 (December 2007).}

The earliest remains of plank-built boats were found at Abydos, Egypt. Dating to c. 3000 BC, they survived thanks to the Egyptian preoccupation with providing their deceased rulers with all they might need in the afterlife. Surprisingly they were not models, as found in later tombs, but full-sized vessels between 60 and 80 feet long. These were royal craft for Nile travel.

There are few early depictions of skin boats, but we do have descriptions of them by Classical writers. Nomads who had devised skin tents could adapt that principle to create the coracle or currach, made of skins stretched across a framework. Round or oval in shape, it is more unwieldy in the water than a dugout canoe, but lighter to carry. They have a long history in the British Isles. Julius Caesar saw such craft there and made use of the idea in his Spanish campaign of 49 BC. Faced with opposing Lusitanian infantry who carried inflatable bladders for river-crossing, while his own troops were hampered by the lack of bridges, he ordered the construction of lightweight craft similar to those he had seen in Britain. The keels and ribs were made of light timber, then the rest of the hulk of the ships was wrought with wicker work, and covered over with hides. It is unclear whether the keel was his own addition to the basic design, or whether he had actually seen British versions with a keel, similar to a kayak.^{7Cæsar’s Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars, trans. W. A. McDevitt (1841), book I, chapters 48, 54.}

The mountain-dwellers of northern Iberia also used hide boats prior to their conquest by the Romans in 136 BC.^{8Strabo, Geography trans. H. L. Jones, 8 vols. (1917-1932), book 3, chapter 3, section 3.} We can trace such boats even further back, thanks to the Greek historian Herodotus, who describes their versatile use around 440 BC to transfer cargo from Armenia down the Euphrates to Babylon:

Their boats, those I mean which go down the river to Babylon, are round and all of leather: for they make ribs for them of willow which they cut in the land of the Armenians who dwell above the Assyrians, and round these they stretch hides which serve as a covering outside by way of hull, not making broad the stern nor gathering in the prow to a point, but making the boats round like a shield: and after that they stow the whole boat with straw and suffer it to be carried down the stream full of cargo; and for the most part these boats bring down casks of palm-wood filled with wine. The boat is kept straight by two steering- oars and two men standing upright, and the man inside pulls his oar while the man outside pushes. These vessels are made both of very large size and also smaller, the largest of them having a burden of as much as five thousand talents' weight; and in each one there is a live ass, and in those of larger size several. So when they have arrived at Babylon in their voyage and have disposed of their cargo, they sell by auction the ribs of the boat and all the straw, but they pack the hides upon their asses and drive them off to Armenia: for up the stream of the river it is not possible by any means to sail, owing to the swiftness of the current; and for this reason they make their boats not of timber but of hides. Then when they have come back to the land of the Armenians, driving their asses with them, they make other boats in the same manner.^{9The History of Herodotus, tr. G. C. Macaulay (1890), book 1, section 194.}

Out to sea

Coastal trips might be managed in a light craft. Venturing out into the open seas is a bolder enterprise. It requires not only seaworthy craft, but some means of navigation beyond sight of land. Until recently it was thought that our seafaring ancestors hugged the coastline until the Neolithic period. The colonisation of Cyprus c. 9000 BC shows that early farmers could move themselves and their stock across the sea. But earlier people were not thought capable of long-distance seafaring. Great was the surprise therefore when two earlier campsites were discovered on the coast of Cyprus in 2005. Flints thought to be a millennium older than the first permanent settlements in the island were found there. This suggests that people in small boats from the Levant and Anatolia paid seasonal visits to the island before settlers arrived. These were daring voyages of at least 50 miles each way. Since both the date of the colonisation of Cyprus and date of the start of the Neolithic have been pushed back by recent radiocarbon dates, these bold seafarers may turn out to be not quite as far ahead of the farmers as first thought. Yet this remains the earliest evidence for open sea navigation.^{10B. Knapp, Cyprus’s Earliest Prehistory: Seafarers, Foragers and Settlers, Journal of World Prehistory (forthcoming), see http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/archaeology/newslinks/ accessed 9 November 2009.}

Early farmers ventured further than Cyprus by sea. They colonised Crete. And it is now thought that most of their colonies along the Mediterranean coast were planted by seafarers. Farming arrived late - about 4000 BC - in the British Isles and Scandinavia. Even so we have no solid evidence of the type of boat first used to transport people and stock across the northern waters. Possibly it was similar to the earliest surviving seagoing boat. The Dover Bronze Age Boat was built around 1550 BC. It was made from two flat-bottom planks, four side-planks and two end-planks, all carved from three very large oak trees. The pieces were stitched together with withies of yew, and the joints waterproofed with moss. A boat of this size would have been capable of crossing the Channel, carrying supplies, livestock and passengers. It is thought that it was propelled by paddles, rather than oars or a sail. Its construction is similar to that of the Ferriby Bronze Age boats found on the banks of the River Humber, East Yorkshire, England. These are somewhat earlier in date, but evidently designed for river travel.

Navigation

Out of sight of land, mariners could roughly gauge their direction of movement by the position of the sun. Steering by the stars is more complex, but offers greater possibilities. We know that seafarers had developed such techniques by the time of the Ancient Greeks, for celestial navigation is mentioned by several authors of the time. Hipparchus of Rhodes (190 BC-120 BC) catalogued the stars' positions in a scientific way. An astronomical computer was found on a Greek ship which sank off Antikythera around 76 BC. This extraordinary discovery is now being reconsidered by the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project.^{1T. Freeth et al, Calendars with Olympiad display and eclipse prediction on the Antikythera Mechanism, Nature vol. 454 (July 2008), pp. 614-617. The existence of the Nebra sky disk suggests some astronomical knowledge in Europe as far back as the Bronze Age.}

Under sail

The Nile was the principal artery of the riverine civilization of Ancient Egypt. The current aided travel downriver, while the prevailing wind was from the north, which no doubt encouraged the development of sails to ease the journey upriver. Early hieroglyphics showed a boat with sail to mean going south, and a boat without sail to indicate northward travel. With a fixed sail and little or no tacking ability, seagoing sailing ships would have to make use of prevailing winds. There are depictions of sailing ships on seals from Minoan Crete and the Persian Gulf around 2000 BC, but the triangular lateen sails which give greater manoeuverability do not appear in images until the 2nd century AD.^{12S. McGrail, Boats of the World: From the Stone Age to Medieval Times (2004), pp. 16, 61, 75, 112.}

Roman war galleys relied on both sail and banks of oarsmen. The Museum of Ancient Shipping in Mainz displays two full-size replicas of such ships, based on discoveries from the former Roman harbor there. Merchant ships were less sleek; their broader beam accommodated more cargo.

As we have seen, the Bronze-Age Celts had developed boats built of planks stitched edge to edge. From this basic concept it seems that the carvel type of ship design evolved, with flat bottoms held together by substantial floors. Caesar described the sturdy ships used by the Celtic tribe called the Veneti of what is now Brittany. The Veneti were noted seafarers. Their many ships controlled trade with Britain. Caesar mentioned that their keels were somewhat flatter than those of Roman ships and so more easily negotiated shallow waters. They were strongly built of oak and had tough sails of dressed hide, rather than canvas.^{13Cæsar’s Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars, trans. W. A. McDevitt (1841), Gallic Wars book 3, sections 8 and 13.} By contrast clinker-built boats, constructed of overlapping planks, were developed by the Norse. The feared Viking longboats were built in this way, such as the ship from Gokstad displayed in the Viking Ship Museum. Descendants of such boats were used by Finns to reach church for Sunday service well into the 20th century. See The Swedish-Finn Historical Society: Church Boats.

For a more detailed account of ancient ship-building, see John Illsley’s History and Archaeology of the Ship [requires Internet Explorer].

Horse power

Back on land a huge leap in mobility was achieved when pedestrians turned into riders. Across the world man has managed to coax any convenient species into acting as beasts of burden. We have already seen how dogs could be harnessed. Dogs were almost certainly the first species to be domesticated. However the breakthrough in mobility came with the harnessing of the horse. Horses ran wild on the wide grasslands of the Eurasian steppes. Strong and fleet of foot, the horse made an ideal mount for man. The European wild horse, with its short, stiff mane, looked different from modern horses, as we see in one of the earliest depictions of a horse-rider.

Identifying exactly where and when the horse was first tamed is no easy process. The earliest images of horse-riders and references to riding may come from Sumeria, but that is no proof that horses (not native to Mesopotamia) were first ridden there. The problem has been attacked recently from fresh angles. David Anthony and Dorcas Brown discovered that horse harness left characteristic bit marks on horse teeth. They agree with another prominent researcher in this field, Marsha Levine, that a region where horses were constantly hunted for food would be the most likely area for domestication. It might start with an orphaned foal or two reared as pets, or as breeding stock for a herd kept initially for meat. That points to the western Eurasian steppes, roughly between the Dnieper and Ural Rivers. Horses were the chief meat animal there around 5000-4500 BC^{14D.W. Anthony, The Horse, The Wheel and Language (2007), chap. 10; M. Levine in M. Levine, C. Renfrew, and K. Boyle (eds.),Prehistoric Steppe Adaptation and the Horse (MacDonald Institute Monographs 2003), p.4.}

By about 3500 BC the bones of large horses, probably from the steppes, began to appear in the Danube valley, central and western Europe, the North Caucasus, Transcaucasia, and eastern Anatolia. At the same time the Botai Culture appeared in the steppes of northern Kazakhstan. This culture had a unique relationship with the horse. Its people not only hunted horses almost exclusively, but it seems that they rode horses to do so. Traces of bit wear provide the convincing clue. Reinforcing it were phosphorus-enriched soils, suggestive of dung deposits, inside what could be the remains of horse corrals. Naturally this discovery led to claims that the horse was first domesticated by the Botai.^{16A. K. Outram et al, The Earliest HorseHarnessing and Milking, Science, vol. 323. no. 5919 (6 March2009), pp. 1332-1335; M.Levine, C. Renfrew, and K. Boyle (eds.),Prehistoric Steppe Adaptation and the Horse (MacDonald Institute Monographs 2003).} This is putting the culture before the horse. The Botai appear to be foragers who turned to horse-hunting once they could ride. The apparent spread of horses c.3500 BC east, west and south of the European steppe suggests a trade in tame horses radiating out from somewhere within that region. The Botai acquired horses at around the same time that a group of people from the Volga-Ural steppe trekked east to the Altai Mountains via the Botai territory.^{16D.W. Anthony, The Horse, The Wheel and Language (2007), chap. 10 and pp. 265, 307-9.}

Another fresh approach is the use of genetics. A study by Arne Ludwig and colleagues of coat colour variation in horses concluded that wild horses were either bay or black. They attribute the present variety of shades to captive breeding, which enables them to suggest Siberia and East Europe in or somewhat earlier than third millennium BC as the probable time and place of horse domestication. However the mitochondrial DNA of modern horses is so diverse that it suggests that wild mares of different areas contributed to the modern gene pool. That could be explained by the capture of a few wild foals at different times and places to add to existing domesticated stock, or to raise new stock. Mitochondrial DNA from Iberian horse skeletons of the Neolithic and later showed that Lusitano group C modern horses were descended from wild mares of Iberia.^{17A. Ludwig et al, Coat Color Variation at the Beginning of Horse Domestication, Science, vol. 324. no. 5926 (24 April 2009), p. 485; T. Jansen et al., Mitochondrial DNA and the origins of the domestic horse, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, vol. 99, no. 16 (6 Aug 2002), pp.10905–10910; J. Lira et al., Ancient DNA reveals traces of Iberian Neolithic and Bronze Age lineages in modern Iberian horses, Molecular Ecology, vol.19, no. 1, pp.64-78.}

Riding would make it possible to control much larger herds of animals, and to venture further with them. Fighting on horseback in the days before a secure saddle, let alone a stirrup, would be a trickier proposition. So it is not surprising that the first evidence for horses being used in warfare is as chariot-horses.

However the stirrup was invented long after cavalry. We may find it surprising nowadays that riders could keep their seats without a stirrup while throwing a spear, or wielding a sword, but the Roman cavalry did so. Much the same can be said for hunting on horseback. Riders had a huge advantage as hunters. Hunting retained its popularity among Indo-European speakers well past the period of their adoption of pastoralism, and then arable agriculture. From Iberia comes this depiction of a boar hunt, with a man on horseback, his dog beside him, about to spear a boar. (The group is on a wheeled platform. This type of artifact is known as a votive cart.)

The importance of the horse to man is demonstrated in its frequent appearance in art, and on seals and coins.

Rolling along

The invention of the wheel increased human mobility immensely. There has been speculation that heavy loads, such as the massive stones of the pyramids or megalithic monuments, could have been moved on wooden rollers. There seems no evidence for or aginst the idea. All one can say is that it is possible that a rolling log generated the idea of the wheel for transport. Yet it seems equally likely that the potter's wheel evolved first, as commonly argued. The truth is that we simply don't know. As with horse-riding, images from Sumeria led to the supposition that it took the lead. The best-known of these images are war wagons on the Standard of Ur. They have wheels of the earliest type - solid rather than spoked. Yet these are by no means the earliest images of wheeled vehicles. The Standard of Ur dates from about 2600 BC.

Pictographs of wagons appear around 3500 BC in Mesopotamia and on a pot from Poland. However the earliest evidence of the wheel comes from the Late Cucuteni-Tripolye culture of what is now Romania and the Ukraine, in the form of wheeled animal and house models. This successful community was apparently taken over by steppe pastoralists around 3,700 BC. The forest-steppe zone whence this mixed culture sprang had the big trees needed for solid wheels, yet access to plains traversable by wheeled traffic, and so was ideal for the development of wheeled vehicles. The earliest surviving complete vehicles come from the steppes. The remains of about 250 wagons or carts, dated around 3000-2000 BC, have been found in kurgans (burial mounds) in the Russian and Ukrainian steppes. Such burials were often rich in grave goods and probably of significant people. A wagon from Ostannii kurgan was radiocarbon dated to 3300-2900 BC. ^{18D.W. Anthony, The Horse, The Wheel and Language (2007), pp. 65-72; A. Parpola, Proto-Indo-European speakers of the Late Tripolye culture as the inventors of wheeled vehicles: Linguistic and archaeological considerations, paper read at the 19th Annual University of California Indo-European Conference.}

The new technology soon spread. Working on a pile-dwelling settlement in the Ljubljana marshes in April 2002, Slovenian archaeologists discovered an ancient wooden wheel in amazingly good condition, and nearby a wooden axle. They had been preserved by the boggy, oxygen-free conditions. Radiocarbon-dated to between 5,100 and 5,350 years old (3350-3100 BC), it is the oldest reliably dated wooden wheel so far found in the world. It has a radius of 70 centimetres and is five cm thick. The square-cut axle would have rotated with the wheel. It was probably part of a single-axle oxcart. Cart models of c. 3,000 BC from Altyn-depe, in Western Central Asia, suggest that the earliest carts were two-wheeled and pulled by oxen. Altyn-depe is a Copper and Bronze Age settlement.^{19Lyubov Kirtcho, The earliest wheeled transport in SouthwesternCentral Asia: new finds from Altyn-Depe, Archaeology, Ethnology andAnthropology of Eurasia, vol. 37, issue 1 (2009),pp.25-33.} In other regions too, wheels and wagons seem to arrive with metallurgy. Another find from the Ljubljana site was a mould for copper axes.^{20Slovenian Government Communications Office press release March 2003.}

Other solid wooden wheels have been found preserved in bogs and lakes in central and northern Europe. So the Slovenian wheel can be fitted into a regional tradition. Early wheels found in the Alps are of the same revolving-axle design. This created more drag and was less efficient than the revolving wheel design found in northern Europe and on the steppes, but it was easier to make. ^{21D.W. Anthony, The Horse, The Wheel and Language (2007), pp. 69-72.}

Further east wheeled vehicles appeared in the advanced Indus Valley Civilization (c. 2600-1500 BC), as we see from the model carts found there, probaby used as toys.

The chariot

The invention of spoked wheels around 2000 BC made possible a lighter vehicle, the chariot, which could be used to devastating effect in warfare. It is from this period that evidence grows for the use of horses in war. Once again early images of the technology appear in the Near East, but its origin appears to lie in the Eurasian steppes. At least 16 graves of the Sintashta culture, Russia, had contained vehicles with two, spoked wheels. As they rotted they left stains preserving their shape. They are dated 2100-1700 BCE, older than the oldest chariots known in the Near East. From the steppe, chariots were introduced into the Near East together with steppe horses and studded disk cheekpieces.^{22D.W. Anthony, The Horse, The Wheel and Language (2007), chap. 15; M. A. Littauer and J. H. Crouwel, ed. by Peter Raulwing, Selected Writings on Chariots and other Early Vehicles, Riding and Harness (2002); R. Drews, Early Riders: The Beginnings of Mounted Warfare in Asia and Europe (2004).}

The swift-moving chariot became the favoured transport of the elite. From the Levant it was taken to Egypt, probably by the Hyksos, a Semitic people who invaded lower Egypt around 1720 BC. Ironically the Hyksos were ultimately expelled by Ahmose I, who is depicted defeating them from his chariot.

Later chariots could be plated with bronze, making them even more expensive and desirable as status symbols. An example was discovered in 2008 in the tomb of a Thracian aristocrat in Bulgaria. The bronze plates are lavishly decorated with scenes from Thracian mythology. Their wheels had twelve spokes each, in marked contrast to depictions of Mycenean chariots from neighbouring Greece with only four spokes per wheel.^{23Nic Fields and Brian Delf, Bronze Age War Chariots (2006), p. 23.}

These glamorous vehicles are beloved by film-makers aiming to recreate life in the great civilizations. They have a considerable amount of evidence to draw on. Depictions of chariots appear in carvings, murals, mosaics and pot decoration. They are listed in royal inventories and mentioned in histories.

By contrast we are generally reliant on archaeology for evidence of the transport used by those cultures outside the literate world, primarily burials including chariots. Permafrost preserved the one shown here from a Scythian burial mound in Siberia. Chariot burials though are mainly confined to Continental Eurasia. So the unearthing in 2001 of an Iron Age chariot burial at Wetwang, England, hit the headlines. Most surprising to many was the fact that the grave was that of a woman. However there are Continental parallels, as we see in the Mycenean wall-painting shown here. Women drivers are nothing new. Much less surprising was its location. One area of Britain is noted for its chariot burials - East Yorkshire, the territory of the Iron Age tribe the Parisi. For decades it was thought that, within Britain, the practice of burying the elite with their vehicles was unique to them. Archaeologists were amazed to find a chariot at Newbridge near Edinburgh, Scotland in 2001. Then in 2003 the Yorshire range of finds was enlarged by the chariot found at Ferrybridge, West Yorkshire.

Roads

How could wheeled vehicles get about without roads? Initially they could make use of open grassland, or flat, sandy terrain. Just as covered wagons crossed the North American prairies long before there were metalled roads, so wagons crossed the Eurasian steppes. Also tracks between settlements were no doubt trampled flat by people on foot and their animals long before the wheel and wagon. Traffic wore the track down below the level of the surrounding terrain, leaving a characteristic sunken lane or hollow way. Satellite images can show more subtle land depressions, which may be much less obvious on the ground. This approach revealed an ancient road system in Northern Mesopotamia.^{24J. Ur, CORONA satellite photography and ancient road networks: a northern Mesopotamian case study, Antiquity (March 1, 2003).}

But urban paths of beaten earth would get churned up by heavy, wheeled traffic. So it is in the first cities that we would expect the first paved thoroughfares. In Mesopotamia Ur and Uruk had stone-paved streets. So did the Indus Valley cities of Harrapa and Mohenjo-daro. It is is more surprising to find cobbled streets in the much earlier Halaf Culture (6100 to 5400 BC) village at Tell Arpachiyah in Northern Mesopotamia, and at the Neolithic village of Choirokoitia in Cyprus.^{25K.R. Nemet-Nejat, Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia (1998), p. 18.}

Longer paved roads were massive undertakings, most likely to be financed by a wealthy polity. The Royal Road was built by the Persian king Darius I (550–486 BC) across his vast empire from Susa to Sardis (2,699 km). He probably incorporated earlier highways, but improved them with a hard-packed gravelled surface held within a stone curbing. The Romans are famed for their straight, well-constructed roads. It is generally assumed that they brought roads to all parts of their empire. This idea is now being vigorously challenged. Raimond Karl points out that the Irish law texts have a great deal to say about roads, which were certainly not Roman, for Rome never conquered Ireland. He argues from references to roads and bridges in Caesar's account of his conquest of Gaul, that the Celts had a pre-Roman a road network in Gaul, and deduces a similar system in Celtic Britain and Ireland.^{26R. Karl, ..on a road to nowhere ..: Chariotry and the road systems in the Celtic world, IRQUAS Online Project (2001); R. Karl, Iron Age chariots and medieval texts: a step too far in "breaking down boundaries"?, e-Keltoi, vol. 5, (2003).}

Pre-Roman Celts were certainly capable of making causeways across marshy ground. This was nothing new. Neolithic villages on natural or man-made islands in lakes or wetlands generally had timber access tracks. The remarkable survival of these ancient wooden tracks is due to the boggy ground into which they eventually sank. These early tracks were intended for pedestrians - there was no thought of wheeled traffic in the Neolithic.^{27Wil A. Casparie and Aonghus Moloney, Neolithic wooden trackways and bog hydrology, Journal of Paleolimnology, vol. 12, no. 1 (January, 1994), pp. 49-64.} But by the Bronze Age timber tracks in Germany and the Netherlands are associated with wheels. In Britain the most famous example is at Flag Fen, built in 1350 BC. The oldest wheel found in Britain, dated 1100 BC, comes from the same site. ^{28B. Fagan, New Finds at Flag Fen, Archaeology, vol. 48, no. 2 (1995), pp.24-26. (The dates of these tracks and wheel have all been obtained by dendrochronology, so they are the felling dates of the timber.)} In Ireland the massive Corlea trackway, almost 4 metres wide, was built of split planks in 147 BC. Equally massive tracks, built in north Germany around the same time, were used by vehicles.^{29B. Raftery, Trackway excavations in the Mountdillon bogs, Co. Longford, 1985-1991 (1996).} At Doogarrymore, Co. Roscommon, two wooden wheels from a cart used in the 400 BC were found in association with such a trackway.^{30National Museum of Ireland.}

Bridges

Anyone who can construct a causeway across a bog should be able to build a bridge across a stream or river. Celtic bridges of the late La Tène period are known from Switzerland.^{31H. Schwab, Cornaux-les-Sauges (canton de Neuchâtel) et les ponts celtiques sur la Broye et la Thielle, Cahiers d'Archéologie Romande (1992), pp. 317-322.} However timber bridges have a poor survival rate. So it is not surprising that the earliest bridges that survive even in part today are solid stone structures. The earliest known stone bridge was built c. 1900 BC at the Palace of Knossos, Crete. Most impressively, some Roman stone bridges are still in use today, though most of them have undergone many repairs and rebuildings.

The last decade has been a lively one for discoveries and rethinking in the realms of early transport. For an excellent, lavishly-illustrated introduction to this topic and the broader one of prehistoric inventions, see B.M. Fagan (ed.), The Seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World (2004).

Notes

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