Transportation and communication are not today's inventions. Nomad tribes walked several thousand miles with their animals. Viking sailors had discovered America way before Columbus did it. Knowledge traversed the whole world through these wandering tribes.
Commerce starts with barter between ancient tribes. In Hungary, the main center of communication was the marketplace -- where not only goods were exchanged, but pieces of information, inventions, knowledge and fashion.
The simplest way of transportation was travelling on foot, which required nothing else but good shoes. Marsh sticks were used to sound bogs and marshlands, while stilts were used to cross them..
Sticks were used as load-bearing tools, too. They hanged scrips, packages and water containers at the end of them. Women made bundles out of the goods that were to be carried, while men carried sacks on their back. Later they devised splint baskets.
They built snow-shoes by bending wickerwork in a circular fashion. Knit with bonds or clematis, they fastened a pair to their feet. The first skis were made out of birch bark, and covered with reindeer skin or seal. The first sleighs were constructed in similarly. The ancestor of skates is the so-called "ironga." It was made from the calfbone of horses or beeves.
The first vehicles devised for transportation by water were rafts made by binding several billets or sheaves of reed together. Nowadays, the high number of dams and weirs makes it impossible to use rafts. The ancestor of ferryboats was a kind of ferry that was moved using a rope tied to the river's two sides. They could make boatlike rafts out of carex or bulrush bunches. The simplest kind of boat was the log-canoe that was made from one large piece of log. The Eskimo invented a one-person leather boat, called kayak; while Native Americans devised the canoe.
These little boats were usually oared with long poles and they used the same for conning. Paddles were invented only later. However, they realized the importance of the energy of wind really early, and made sails: first from various parts of plants and from leafs, but soon they started to use canvas for that purpose. The development of carpentry brought the possibility to build complex hulks -- based on the example provided by the skeletons of vertebrata.
Considering ground transport, the easiest solution is to pack animals and make them carry the packages. The most primitive tools of transportation that are pulled by animals are the sliding vehicles.
The invention of wheel was one of the biggest achievement of humankind. Its simplest form was the disk-wheel, consisting of one part only. Later more developed versions appeared, first strengthened by battens, then an even more sophisticated version with rays.
Originally, the axes were revolving together with the wheels. However, by the middle ages cartwrights and coach-builders succeeded in creating more complex and sophisticated designs.
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