"so efficient that they resulted in massive deterioration of Chinese road infrastructure."
I think you inverted the cause/effect relationship described in that article. It says:
> Prior to the third century AD, China had an extensive and well-maintained road network suited for animal powered carts and wagons. It was only surpassed in length by the Ancient Roman road network. ... The Chinese and Roman road systems were built (independently) over the course of five centuries during the same period in history. Curiously, due to (unrelated) political reasons, both systems also started to disintegrate side by side from the third century AD onwards, and herein lies the explanation for the success of the Chinese wheelbarrow. As we have seen, the one-wheeled vehicle appeared during this period, and this is no coincidence. Increasingly, it was the only vehicle that could be operated on the deteriorating road network.
The centuries of extensive roads in China was during the Han dynasty. "By the 2nd century, the empire declined amidst land acquisitions, invasions, and feuding between consort clans and eunuchs. The Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out in AD 184, ushering in an era of warlords." (Quoting Wikipedia.)
The decline of the Han Dynasty and the fragmentation of the country into independent kingdoms lead to the decline in the road system. Not the Chinese wheelbarrow.
A fantastic article - the economic advantage of camels just killed off a fundamental invention. fascinating and may I say on a front page full of Spectre doom, just spot on for "gratifying intellectual curiosity".
An account of historical causes and effects is hard. We should not attribute the lack of roads to the lack of wheels, the author writes. Wheels and roads develop "in parallel." Yet he comes back to the "inefficient harness" as the cause of the wheel dying off. If indeed there was competition between "horse + harness + wheel" and "camel," why wouldn't a culture produce "camel + harness + wheel?" I am unconvinced by the reasoning here.
Bulliet has an entire book ("The Camel and the Wheel") in which he takes great care to address this point. As another reader has pointed out, harnessing camels is much more difficult than harnessing a horse, and camels are not good draught animals.
Bulliet recently published his history of the Wheel, which is excellent ("The Wheel: Inventions and Reinventions"). I highly recommend it.
I'll also add that Bulliet's "Hunters, Herders, & Hamburgers" – though unfortunately titled – is one of the best books around on the history of animal domestication.
No-one's ever been able to come up with a simple but efficient harness for a camel; there are no known pre-19th century ones. Whereas the horse collar is fundamentally just a padded loop, and was invented independently in Europe and China at least.
Horse collars are far more than padding. That they are solid, not loops of rope, means that the animal can push hard against them without choking itself.
From what I remember early horse collars would choke the animals, and more sophisticated ones were a big deal invention in late first millennium Europe (or maybe introduced to Europe at that point from contact with Asians?).
This was one reason oxen were used as draft animals in preference to horses.
I am a bit surprised that the article does not discuss (if only to dismiss) the notion that camels were better adapted than oxen to the environment of the middle east.
The middle east is a big place. It isnt all hot/dry sand. There are many places where camels were not the best adapted to the environment but were nevertheless more economical, at least until the invention of ridged horse collars.
The authors talk about advantages in this section, and I assume if there was another purported advantage they thought was worth addressing, they would have mentioned it here:
The ox cart was equally slow, and in the competition the camel had certain positive advantages. It ate otherwise unusable desert plants, which made its upkeep inexpensive. Little wood, a valuable commodity in the largely deforested Middle East, was required by ancient saddling technology. And its care and breeding could be left to the nomads and thus not be a burden upon the farmer or merchant.
These advantages meant that camel transport was about 20 percent cheaper than wagon transport
The article is from 1973, so perhaps the idea you're thinking of has arisen since then.
"Worldwide, however, the population of camels is rapidly declining."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_feral_camel
The exact population of Australian feral camels is not known. In 2008 the number of feral camels was estimated to be more than one million, with the capability of doubling in number every 8 to 10 years.[18][19] In 2013, this estimate was revised to a population of 600,000 prior to culling operations, and around 300,000 camels after culling, and increasing 10% per year.[20]
It doesn't appear to mention how terrible dragging an ordinary wheel through soft sand is, which surely had to be one of the major factors. Also the lack of wood on desert routes for easy repair; and the fast deterioration of wood in desert climates.
The only consideration of wood is how little is needed for a camel saddle.
Increased or moved desertification making routes unsuitable with wooden wheels seems like it might easily surpass sociopolitical factors.
I was pondering the other day how robotic 'camels' are now possible as a transport option, I'm sure the military have been exploring this. Camels have an advantage in rough terrain over wheels...
Separately, robotic camel jockeys https://youtu.be/HUsibMZlyXg
The article contains a howler: it's Pre-ColUmbian, not pre-ColOmbian. This article has nothing to do with the pre-ColOmbian short-lived Republic of Nueva Granada.
Essentially, traditional Chinese wheelbarrows were so efficient that they resulted in massive deterioration of Chinese road infrastructure.