Before 5000 BCE · Africanapproximate
The donkey was the first multipurpose beast of burden in the world
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One animal went out from Africa to the rest of the world and changed how goods move. Modern contempt for the donkey obscures the scale of that. Centuries of Western usage have turned the animal's name into a term of abuse for stupidity, and the abuse has done real damage to the record. The donkey was the first multipurpose beast of burden in history. It carried loads and it carried riders. In the Middle East people harnessed it early to wheeled vehicles. Long distance trade in goods depended on owning donkeys, and so did the first wheeled transport anywhere. The uses people found for it very likely supplied the model for domesticating and working horses and camels later on. Every chariot in Egypt, every camel caravan crossing Arabia, every cavalry charge in the ancient world descends conceptually from an animal that Africans brought under care thousands of years before a horse carried anyone.
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