Animal traction: draught oxen and yoke
Tracción animal: buey de tiro y yugo
- Date
- c. 4000 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Mesopotamia and central Europe (Flintbek, Germany; Uruk, Iraq)
- Credited to
- Chalcolithic societies of western Eurasia
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Castration of bulls and yoking in pairs under a wooden yoke to pull sledges, ploughs and carts. The first non-human energy source: it multiplies the power available in the field tenfold.
Cart tracks at Flintbek (c. 3400 BCE), draught pathologies in central European oxen (c. 4000 BCE) and Uruk seals support 4th-millennium dates; some authors push it back to the 5th.
What it led to
- Ploughing and extensive cultivation of heavy soils: surplus agriculture
- Land transport of loads and carts: trade and warfare
- Wealth differentiation based on ox ownership; division of field labour by sex
Built on
Made possible
- Ard (scratch plough)c. 3800 BCE
- Horse domesticationc. 3500 BCE (discutido)
- Wheel and wheeled vehiclec. 3500 BCE
- Threshing with animals
- Noria (waterwheel)