Yoke and draft harness
Yugo y arnés de tiro
- Date
- c. 3000 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Uruk and Ur, Mesopotamia, Iraq
- Credited to
- Sumerians
- Field
- Movement
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Wooden crossbar fixed to the necks of oxen or to the necks of donkeys and horses that transmits the animal's power to the plough or cart. The neck yoke for cattle was effective; the throat-and-girth harness for equids was inefficient, limiting loads until the medieval horse collar.
The Standard of Ur (c. 2500 BCE) already shows four-wheeled carts drawn by donkeys with a yoke; the ox yoke is probably earlier (Chalcolithic).
What it led to
- Plough agriculture that multiplied the cultivable area per family
- Long-distance transport of goods and overland bulk trade
- Specialisation of livestock into draught animals and a new class of workers: oxherds and charioteers
Built on
- Ard (scratch plough)c. 3800 BCE
- Ox domestication
- Solid-disc wheel
Made possible
- Seeder plough with drill tubec. 3000 BCE
- War chariotc. 1900 BCE
- Animal-drawn plough
- Ox cart
- Horse collar (Middle Ages)