A History of Agriculture in India v1.c19.s3: The Wheeled Cart
A History of Agriculture in India v1.c19.s3
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The Wheeled Cart
v1.c19.s3.1
Ox-drawn sledges were still being used about 3000 B.C. at Ur to convey royal corpses to their final resting-place. But long before that date, the sledge had been transformed by an invention that revolutionized locomotion on land. The wheel was the crowning achievement of prehistoric carpentry; it is the pre-condition of modern machinery, and, applied to transport, it converted the sledge into a cart or wagon.
v1.c19.s3.2
Wheeled vehicles are represented in the Sumerian art as early as 3500 B.C., and in northern Syria perhaps even earlier. By 3000 B.C., carts, wagons, and even chariots were in general use in Elam, Mesopotamia and Syria.
v1.c19.s3.3
In the Indus Valley, wheeled carts were in use when the archaeologic record begins about 2300 B.C. and at about the same date in Turkestan too. Children's toys from Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Lothal and Chandigarh include some wheeled carts, which indicates that they were in use in ordinary life (Fig. 81). Bronze models of carts have also been found at Harappa and Chanhu-daro. These bullock carts had solid wheels. They very much resemble small carts, called lahiru, which are used for carting farmyard manure in the villages of Oudh. In Orissa the bullock-carts have solid wheels. A toy-cart from Mohenjo-daro had a basket-like body, which indicates that it was possibly used for carting farmyard manure (Fig. 83). Excavations at Harappa have revealed cart-ruts, 3 feet 6 inches (1 metre) in width. The present-day bullock-carts in Sind have the same width (Fig. 82, right).