Editing Cart (section)

==History==

The history of the cart is closely tied to the [[Wheel#History|history of the wheel]]. Carts have been mentioned in literature as far back as the second millennium B.C. The first people to use the cart may have been [[Mesopotamians]]. Handcarts pushed by humans have been used around the world.

Carts were often used for judicial punishments, both to transport the condemned – a public humiliation in itself (in [[Ancient Rome]] defeated leaders were often carried in the victorious general's [[Roman triumph|triumph]]) – and even, in England until its substitution by the [[pillory|whipping post]] under [[Elizabeth I of England|Queen Elizabeth I]], to tie the condemned to the ''cart-tail'' (the back part of a cart) and administer him or her a public whipping. [[wikt:tumbril|Tumbrils]] were commonly associated with the French Revolution as a mobile stage elevating the condemned on the way to the guillotine: this was simply a continuation of earlier practice when they were used as the removable support in the gallows, before [[Albert Pierrepoint]] calculated the precise drop needed for instant severance of the [[spinal column]].

<gallery mode="packed" heights="160" caption="Ancient carts">
File:Greek chariot.jpg|[[Etruscan civilization|Etruscan]] chariot, 6th century BC
File:Egyptian Chariot (colour).jpg|[[Ramesses II]] on an Egyptian chariot
File:Eastern Han Bronze Cavalry and Chariots2.JPG|[[Han dynasty]] bronze figures, 1st or 2nd century AD
</gallery>