Michelle Mulder - Brilliant!: Shining a light on sustainable energy

People have used oxen for farming and hauling heavy loads for thousands of years.
This team plowed fields near Crossfield, Alberta, around 1904. GLENBOW ARCHIVES, NA-1107-5

These days we dont worship the fire gods every time we light a candle. Instead, we recognize fire as a powerful source of energy. Scientists define energy as the ability to make things happen. For example, the energy from a campfire transforms your marshmallow into a toasty ball of gooey sweetness. The food energy from that marshmallow lets you walk to a friends tent or jump back if you hear something rustling in the bushes. And those bushes used the energy from the sun to grow to the size they are today. Energy is all around us, getting things done.

Way back in those days of fire gods, people hunted their food or harvested it from the forest. Later, when they learned how to grow it themselves, they plowed the fields with tools and their own muscle power. Then someone had a big idea. An idea the size of an ox.

About 7,000 years ago, a few people in the Near East, and a few others on the Indian subcontinent, managed to tame the wild ancestors of the ox and fit them with special harnesses called yokes. Oxen are about seven times as powerful as humans, and the yokes allowed people to control them. Soon the beasts were plowing fields far more efficiently than humans ever could.

Later, about 4,000 to 6,000 years ago, someone figured out how to make horseshoes to protect the soft part of horses hooves; this meant that people could ride horses without hurting them, and horses got put to work. Horseback riding allowed people to go faster and farther than ever before. Horses have even been called the worlds first rapid transit!