Nowadays when we think horse, we think “proto-car” – this is just how everyone got around before Henry Ford built a version that didn’t semi-literally fill cities with crap. The generic staple of every fantasy book.
So without further ado, let’s look at the available options: HorsesĪh, yes.
The plot in your low-tech worlds may not always flow along rivers and oceans your characters are going to have to hire a carriage or buy a mule eventually. Despite the human proclivity for settling along coastlines and navigable waterways, ships and riverboats can’t get you to your family farm up in the hills. So if boats were so great, why was pre-Space Age Earth so chock-full of beasts of burden? Domestic non-food animals had two important roles: labor and short-range travel. (Those famous Roman Roads? Mostly for armies.) Only on the drier open steppes and plains were animal transportation options of tantamount importance. * Overland transportation was common enough, but it tended to be a hugely inefficient method for transporting bulk goods. Where there were waterways, there was trade and empire. Inland, travel was dominated by…smaller ships. Along coastlines, travel was dominated by ships. We must invoke anthropology, geography, and engineering to understand why some animals became mainstays of overland travel, while superficially equivalent large animals did not.īut before we look at our options for overland transportation, let’s be clear about one thing: this was the least-important long-distance travel method of the ancient world. Which animals would a culture use to get around, and why? A complete answer requires looking beyond direct comparisons of different animals.
So let’s take a realistic look at the animals that can provide overland transportation. Only in the past 100 years has overland transportation been dominated by smoking, oil-drinking abominations of gears and glass throughout history, most humans have relied on some manner of large beastie to haul around their stuff or themselves. Whether your setting is gritty medieval-esque fantasy, stonepunk suburbia, or just plain bizarre, you’ll probably need animal transportation and labor.
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