Page 110 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

transportation—overview 1887

One day the war will be over. And I hope that the people that use this bridge in
years to come will remember how it was built and who built it. Not a gang of
slaves, but soldiers, British soldiers, even in captivity. • Sir Alec Guiness as
Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai

other things. Eventually, human carrying capacity was Movement
much enlarged by using pouches tied to the waist, and by Through Water
carrying heavier objects in slings stretched across the Fishing at sea from rafts and boats was of lasting impor-
shoulders, using backpacks, and balancing jars on top of tance and probably first flourished on the monsoon seas
the head. But no one knows when or how these adjuncts of Southeast Asia. Monsoon winds blow equably for
to unaided human muscles originated or how they nearly all of the year, reversing their direction each spring
spread. Nonetheless these simple forms of transport con- and autumn.That made sailing safer and easier than on
tinue to exist. Women carrying jars of water on their stormier seas. Fishermen, of course, had to be able to get
heads can still be seen in places where pipes do not bring back to shore with their catch, preferably arriving at the
it into their homes, for example. And children carry harbor or beach they had departed from to rejoin women
books to school in backpacks in most modem cities. and children left behind. In other words, they had to be
A superior cooling system makes human bodies able to steer and move across or even against the wind
unusually efficient load carriers thanks to our sweat and sea or river currents. Various combinations of keel,
glands. As it evaporates, sweat dissipates body heat far paddles, oars, and sails eventually made that possible, but
faster than panting does, thus sustaining prolonged mus- all details are unknown.
cular effort even under a tropical sun.Vigorous persons Yet it is obvious that when controlled movement
can walk up to twenty miles a day even with loads of through water had been mastered, long journeys also
twenty to thirty pounds. Accordingly, for hundreds of became feasible up and down rivers, and by sailing
thousands of years, foragers moved about in small bands, within sight of land, hauling boats or rafts ashore when
carrying everything they needed with them day after day. needing to rest. As a result, navigation by sea and along
On festival occasions they met and danced with neigh- suitably slow rivers began to match and more than match
bors and sometimes encountered wandering strangers. overland transport, since rafts, dugout canoes and small
Such contacts allowed exchange of rare and precious boats (sometimes made of animal skins stretched on a
objects, like razor-sharp obsidian blades, across hun- wooden frame) carried larger loads longer distances with
dreds of miles. Superior tools and weapons, such as the far less muscular effort than moving cross-country
bow and arrow, also spread very widely by the same sort required. But for a long time stormy coasts where high
of occasional contacts and collisions among small wan- tides prevailed were too dangerous for such navigation.
dering bands. Accordingly, to begin with travel and fishing at sea flour-
As our ancestors spread across the earth some bands ished principally along monsoon coasts of the Indian
left tropical warmth behind and had to learn to live in Ocean, the southwest Pacific Ocean, and the numerous
diverse climates. This too provoked invention—clothes Southeast Asian islands in between.
for example. But as far as transport was concerned, the
really important advance was learning to move across Domesticated Animals
water. Sitting astride a floating log was perhaps the first as Transport
sort of flotation. But when, where, and how human Starting about 11,000 years ago, in several different
beings first learned to make and use burden-bearing parts of the earth, people settled down and began to live
rafts and boats is unknown.We do know that people got in agricultural villages. Producing the food they ate by
to Australia sometime between 60,000 and 40,000 years prolonged muscular effort allowed human populations to
ago, and can only have done so by crossing about sixty become far denser than before. They also needed more
miles of open sea. This required rafts or boats of some transport. After all, foragers moved themselves to where
sort; and therefore counts as the dawn of human seafar- their food grew naturally; while farmers had to carry
ing, even though contact with the Asian mainland was enough food for a whole year (plus seed for the next sea-
not subsequently maintained. son) from where it grew to a safe place for storage near