How has the development of transport affected civilisation and society?

The development of transport, which began in BC, has drastically changed human life. It has played an important role in the development of civilisation and social change.

 

The English word for transport, “transport”, is a combination of the words “trans”, meaning “across, over”, and “porte”, meaning “to carry”. In German, it’s also called “Verkehr”, which means “to do in one place and to follow in another”. Our dictionary defines transport as “the movement of people to and from a place, or of goods to and from a place, by car, train, ship, or plane.” The reason why the words for transport have such subtle differences in meaning is because the meaning they express is much more abstract and broader than we think. Let’s take a look at the origins and development of the word transport or transport, which is so closely related to our lives and yet so difficult to define in a single word.
We know from history that round wheels have been used since around 5,000 BC, and that chariots were built and used as transport tools since around 2,000 BC, so we can see that transport has evolved throughout human history. Chariots were created around 3,500 BC in Mesopotamia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. The first cartwheels were made from a single log without rims, or from two or three wooden planks joined together, making them very heavy and uncomfortable to use. However, around 2,000 BC, the development of the technique of hollowing out the centre of the wheel by nailing spokes to the wooden rim made the wheel much lighter. These lighter wheels made it possible to use horses, donkeys, and other animals as power sources to move quickly, which greatly increased activity. There are many explanations for the emergence of carts and other forms of transport, but the dominant explanation is that as humans lived in groups and gradually expanded their living areas, the natural barrier of geographical distance was removed. This is because people realised that bringing goods such as fruit or cloth from outside their own community could improve their quality of life by increasing their aggregate surplus, as it is called in economics. This is similar to how it takes less labour to pack a lunch at an elementary school picnic if each person brings a side dish to share, such as rice, kimchi, sausage, etc. than if everyone packs a lunch.
In addition to transporting goods from other parts of the country, the need for transport also emerged for rulers’ commemorative projects and as a way to prevent enemy invasions. The greatest structures that have survived are the pyramids of Egypt in the 27th century BC, the Great Wall of China in the 2nd century BC, and the roads and aqueducts of Rome, and it is obvious that it was not possible to source the materials for the construction of these huge structures locally. Therefore, the stone and wood needed to build these massive structures had to be brought in from far away, which shows that the development of civilisation and the development of transport are closely linked.
The development of transport is very closely related to the development of transport and roads. We can mention the Roman roads, which were probably the first innovative roads that appeared for people on foot and wheeled chariots, which were the first means of transport. The vast network of roads built by the Roman Empire in the first century BC and AD, centred on Rome and connecting it to the rest of Europe, was not only orderly and grandiose in its planning, reaching every corner of the empire, but also highly technical in its construction. It is said that the arterial roads stretched out from Rome in all directions, covering 90,000 kilometres, and that the secondary roads added up to 300,000 kilometres. The fact that some of them are still in use today is a testament to their excellence. In the 19th century, the Englishmen T. Telford and J.L. McCatham devised new methods of road construction, making it relatively easy to create a road surface suitable for carriage traffic. In particular, the McCatham method, which used relatively small crushed stone, was superior. This method spread throughout Europe and even to the United States, where it was used for many years afterwards.
It was during the Industrial Revolution that this horse-drawn transport changed dramatically. The development of transport during the Industrial Revolution took place in three phases. The first phase was the improvement of roads. From the mid-18th century onwards, new road paving methods were developed and roads were improved in earnest. At this time, the newly constructed roads took the form of toll roads. Instead of parishes managing the roads, trusts of landowners, merchants, manufacturers, and others operated the roads commercially. Most toll roads were short, around 30 miles, but many were linked to form a national network. The second stage in the development of transport was the construction of canals, which are waterways dug out of the land for the passage of ships or for irrigation, drainage, or water for agricultural purposes, and are often connected to natural waterways to shorten journeys. Since the construction of canals required a lot of capital, the method of raising capital by establishing a joint stock company was actively utilised. In addition, many engineers were involved in the construction of canals as they required advanced technologies such as aqueducts and underground tunnels. The third stage in the development of transport was the construction of railways, which were initially used inside coal mines but gradually became a means of transport connecting mining areas with industrial areas. From the late 18th century onwards, many engineers began to think of ways to move trains using steam as a power source and the friction of the rails and wheels. Murdoch, Watt’s assistant, built a model of a steam locomotive in 1784, and Trevithick, a Cornish mining engineer, built a four-mile-per-hour locomotive in 1804. Stevenson, the father of the steam locomotive, developed a commercially viable 12-mile-per-hour locomotive in 1814. The Liverpool-Manchester Railway, the world’s first long-distance railway, opened in 1830, and Stevenson’s rocket boats travelling at 14 miles per hour sparked a boom in railways. Unconstrained by natural conditions, railways gradually replaced horse-drawn carriages and canals as the dominant mode of transport. The development of railways in particular led to the unification of the domestic market, elevating local economies to the level of national economies.
The improvement of roads, the construction of canals, and the development of railways during the Industrial Revolution not only greatly increased the rate of supply of the raw materials needed to produce goods, resulting in an increase in productivity, but also reduced the relative importance of the place where goods were produced due to the reduction in transport time and cost, thus weakening the social position of the aristocracy, which owned most of the land. Amidst the enormous impact of the Industrial Revolution on society as we know it, we can see that the impact of the development of transport was also significant.
Later, air transport not only expanded the spatial reach of traditional modes of transport, but also dramatically overcame temporal constraints, making the term global village possible. In 1903, the Wright brothers’ petrol-powered Flyer made the first ever powered flight of 36 metres in 12 seconds at Kitty Hawk, USA. The performance of aeroplanes improved rapidly during the First World War, and in 1927, Charles Augustus Lindbergh II of the United States flew his Spirit of Saint Louis across the Atlantic Ocean between New York and Paris without landing (a distance of 5809 kilometres and a flight time of 34 hours and 55 minutes). Today, the distance from New York to Paris is only about seven hours on a regular airliner. Air traffic is responsible for the modern world, where you can have lunch in Paris, fly to New York, and then have dinner in New York, making it a truly global society.
As we’ve seen, the development of transport stems from efforts to overcome the physical and temporal constraints that hinder human needs. Wagons, roads, canals, and railways are some of the effective means created by this. However, it’s important to note that these tools not only broke the constraints of space and time, which was their purpose, but also created a powerful Roman army and expanded the wave of capitalism. This shows that transport is more than just a tool, it creates new cultures, influences them, and develops with them. The recent appearance of singer Sai in the US has been reported positively in the newspapers and news as a sign of the world’s growing interest in Korean culture. If we recall that Sai’s entry into the US market was also made possible by the development of transport, we can see that transport plays a big role not only in the creation of culture but also in the exchange of culture.
However, in addition to these positive impacts, modern transport also brings with it problems such as pollution, noise, environmental pollution, greenhouse effect, and depletion of energy resources. These are issues that need to be discussed and addressed not only at the national level, but also at the international level. In particular, as more and more of the world’s energy consumption is related to traffic and transport, efforts are required to reduce the amount of energy consumed by public transport and to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the internal combustion engine of automobiles. When accompanied by such efforts, the development of modern transport will continue to improve the overall standard of living of mankind, as it provides a decisive pretext for the exchange of culture, technology, goods and information between regions and countries.