1116 transportation: Europe 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 stirrups and provided enough stability that an archer could shoot accurately while riding Until this innovation chariots had been the best mobile platform for archers The Scythians also introduced the use of a blanket for padding under a saddle; the Chinese modified this idea by padding the saddle itself The Chinese were probably the inventors of the double shaft for vehicles, introducing two-wheeled carts with double shafts and one horse The 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 The double shaft had poles to each side of one draft animal, allowing it to pull a cart and keep it in a straight line After 100 b.c.e double-shafted carts became common in China Despite the great advances in technology, much transportation of goods was still a matter of humans carrying loads China had many regions where the only roads were merely footpaths Sometime around the first century c.e an unknown Chinese inventor introduced the wheelbarrow Essentially 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 fields and homes and moving countless tons of supplies and raw materials for the building of roads, dams, and other public projects 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 The word for ski is similar in language communities 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 effect 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 They subsequently discovered 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 after the fall of the Roman Empire and the stirrup was a still later innovation The 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 common 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 The earliest European wagons, which date to the end of the fourth millennium b.c.e., were clumsy, lumbering vehicles They were probably first pulled EUROPE BY MICHAEL J O’NEAL During the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and most of the Neolithic periods people in Europe traveled mainly by foot In most cases they did not travel great distances, but sometimes they went on long treks The 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 obstacles, 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 They were probably invented in many different places once people began to adapt to modern climatic conditions after 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- Horse harness fittings from Iron Age Britian (1–100 c.e.) (© The Trustees of the British Museum)