Traditional manpower transportation in the lands of Poland

A man had been carrying various loads for ages. It was a few thousand years ago that after spreading of agriculture and sedentary lifestyle as well as domestication of cattle, horses and donkeys, new methods of transportation including pack, land and vehicular transport appeared. In spite of that, it was until the first half of the 20th century that country inhabitants started to carry various loads, usually within their farms and on the way to or from the field or forest as well as to carry products for sale to market in town. They used different baskets (see the map), other woven containers and loops, sheets, bags to carry weights on their back. There were also itinerant sellers and manufacturers who reached the country while travelling through the vast areas of central Europe and they mostly used baskets and chests carried on their backs. Using an ethno-geographic method based on materials collected in the Studio of the Polish Ethnographic Book of Maps and numerous maps, the author describes the dynamics of cultural changes, disappearance of some ways and tools that served to carry things (containers made of bark, nets stretched on arches, water-jugs and wooden buckets and many others) and emergence of new tools. The changes happen in the pace set by the country economy, e.g. following potato cultivation big baskets appeared. Such innovations and others usually came from the west, whereas archaisms and relics mostly were observed in the north-eastern part of Poland