Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.113

c12.113

For slower and heavier transport, the ox-cart was extensively used in the Harappā Culture. Models of carts in clay are among the commonest antiquities on the prehistoric sites of the Punjab and Sind, and the type represented is exactly that which today creaks and groans with its ungreased, nearly solid wheels in the villages round Mohenjo-daro, and in fact carries your luggage from Dokri railway station to the site when you visit it. The type, we now know, is unchanged even in its wheel-base, for the recent Harappā excavations have revealed cart-ruts belonging to an early phase of the city's occupation having a width of some 3 feet 6 inches, which is that of the modern carts in Sind. Such things have a long survival-value – the standard gauge of modern English carts was already fixed by the third century B.C. in these islands.