Monthly Archives: April 2014
335.WHAT WAS THE FIRST MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION?
If you were stranded on a desert island and you wanted to get something from one place to another, what would you do? You would carry it! In primitive times human muscles were the only means of transporting anything. Man was his own “beast of burden.”
In time man tamed certain animals and taught them to carry riders or other loads. The ox, the donkey, the water buffalo, the horse, and the camel were used by early man in various parts of the world for transportation.
334.WHAT WAS THE FIRST HIGHWAY?
Animal tracks through forests and jungles were probably the beginning of man’s roads. They were easier and safer to use than to force new ways through dense undergrowth. The earliest roads made by men for their own use were probably footpaths leading from their shelters to the nearest streams and hunting grounds.
When men began trading with one another, roads became more important. The great overland trade routes across Europe and Asia came into use for the transportation of such things as amber, silk, and precious stones. These were merely tracks and trails well worn by constant use.
333.WHAT WAS THE FIRST BANK?
A grocer deals in food, a hardware store in household items, and a banker in money. The main business of banks is to lend money and to handle money which has been deposited with them. Of course, banks today provide many more services than just these, but it all has to do with the handling of money.
Ever since man had a kind of money, it has been necessary for someone to hold it for him safely, or to lend him some when he needed it. For example, in ancient Babylon, even before coins had been invented, there were men who made a business of borrowing, lending, and holding money for other people. They might be called bankers, though they were considered moneylenders. Some of that business was in the hands of the priests in the temples, and there were laws that regulated this business.
