History of camel: use for draught

In his fascinating book The Camel and the Wheel (1975), Richard Bulliet of Columbia-Ahmadinejad fame musters an impressive body of camel-knowledge to argue that the efficiency of the camel as a pack animal is largely what drove the disappearance of the wheel from Middle Eastern cultures since Roman times. By coordinating economic, political, social, and, interestingly, camel saddling aspects of Middle Eastern societies, he convincingly shows that the invention of the North Arabian saddle allowed nomadic camel-herders to begin to dominate overland trade routes. This dominance in turn triggered the abandonment of the less-efficient cart. The expansion of Islam reintroduced or solidified the role of the camel across North Africa, the Middle East, and South and Central Asia, and these societies, by and large, discarded the wheel in favor of the more efficient pack camel.

In India, however, cultural familiarity with the wheel was stronger, and even in the most arid, camel-friendly reaches of the Thar desert the cart survived, in all of its oxen-, donkey-, and camel-powered varieties. The camel cart is commonplace on the streets of Bikaner, still used alongside tractors and trucks. The most important selection criteria in the NRCC's complicated method for evaluating the suitability and value of male camels are those related to draught ability. Pack camels, once the lifeline of this desert city, are now only used to transport that most agreeable and easily-loaded commodity: tourists.

Here, a typical camel cart after transporting feed to the main corral. Note the saddle, an Indian pakkra. I took the photo during a sandstorm: