After about 1000 AD northwestern Europe started a gradual switch from using oxen to using horses for farm traction and transportation. This trend culminated in an eighteenth-century explosion in roads carrying horse-drawn carriages and wagons, as well as in canals, and works greatly extending the navigability of rivers, both carrying horse-drawn barges. This reflected a great rise in the use of cultivated fodder, a hallmark of the novel agricultural system that was evolving in northwestern ...
