I once watched a course on You Tube on the history of Western Civilization. The professor made the argument that the success of our civilization was due to the donkey. It seemed a ludicrous theory on it’s face but when he explained it it actually made sense. The donkey was the main source of transport for goods between the civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Levant into Egypt. All the progress of our civilization in it’s formative years, was literally carried on the back of an ass
This is like the contention in James Burke’s “Connections” that it was the plow, that allowed for the advance of human civilization, it triggered everything that came after it.
When I searched for out of copyright postcards for illustrating these articles (I never got past the Little Golden Books period), most of the postcards were from those types of locations. Fascinating theory.