Two wheels beat four for the first animal-drawn vehicles
The earliest wheeled vehicles were four-wheeled wagons, but the cart soon proved its worth. With only two wheels, it needed roughly 40 percent less pulling force than a wagon of equal weight and could turn far more easily, which made it the workhorse of farming and trade once oxen and horses were domesticated.
The wheel itself appeared around 3400 to 3000 BC. Before that, people dragged loads on sledges and travois, frames that slid along the ground. Pairing wheel and axle changed how goods and people moved, and a later shift from solid wooden wheels to lighter spoked ones made long hauls practical.
How a cart is rigged depends on what pulls it. One animal stands between a pair of shafts that balance the load, with their weight resting on a padded harness saddle. A pair of animals flanks a single central pole instead. Traces of leather, chain or rope link the vehicle to a collar or yoke. Because horses, ponies, donkeys and mules all wear the same kind of harness, their carts count as one category.
Hauling heavy loads such as coal by cart was a trade in its own right, and the men who walked beside the horses gave rise to the surname Carter. Builders of the vehicles were cartwrights. Cities depended on specialised versions. Night-soil carts collected human waste after dark before sewers existed, and from the 18th to the 20th centuries rag-and-bone men pushed or led carts gathering rags, bones and scrap for reuse. In the mid-1800s, Mormon emigrants heading west hauled their belongings in large handcarts.
Over time the word loosened. It now covers almost any small conveyance, whatever its number of wheels or source of power, from shopping trolleys to airport baggage carts. Some uses grew out of car being softened in speech, which is how golf cars became golf carts and petrol-engined karts became go-carts. A dogcart, confusingly, was a horse-drawn vehicle built to carry dogs, not one pulled by them.
Source: Cart
