Before the invention of the steam engine and above all the internal-combustion engine, in most European countries transport and tillage were accomplished with horses or oxen as draft animals. In the Mediterranean world, mules could be employed, less frequently donkeys, sometimes teamed with oxen [5. 21]. There were various ways of harnessing the animal traction. In the case of oxen, the withers yoke had been in use since the early Middle Ages, usually in the form of a double yoke. Under such a  yoke, the oxen did not actually pull but pushed, as the German vernacular verb schieben sug…