the.com/barrow
A wheel, two handles, and the simple genius that built every pyramid by the cartful.
means A small hand-pushed cart with one wheel and two handles, used to carry loads of dirt, bricks, or garden waste; also, an ancient mound of earth raised over a grave.
from Two separate old words wearing the same modern coat. The cart-sense comes from Old English 'bearwe,' a thing for bearing or carrying — a cousin of 'bear,' the verb, since a barrow is literally something you bear loads in. The burial-mound sense comes from a different Old English root, 'beorg,' meaning hill or mountain (related to German 'Berg'), the same family that gives us 'iceberg.' Over centuries the two collapsed into one spelling, so that one 'barrow' you push and the other you'd be buried under.
- ancient tech
- Chinese armies used wheelbarrows by the first century
- burial mound
- A barrow is also a Stone Age grave
- one wheel
- Single wheel turns dead weight into easy load
- market roots
- London costermongers sold goods from pushcart barrows
barrow-in-furness — town in northwest england with major steelworks and shipbuilding heritage since 1867
newgrange passage tomb — 5200-year-old megalithic barrow in county meath, ireland, older than stonehenge