The wonder of how we get from one place to another isn’t always a topic of profound thought, let alone an object of historical inquiry. In a century in which access to some form of automated transportation is something much of the world takes for granted, it’s often difficult to place the innovation into its broader historical context. The prolific writer Tom Standage helps readers do just that, detailing the nearly 6,000-year trajectory of ancient, medieval, and modern vehicles to reveal the prolonged trends, similarities, and pitfalls of each.

Starting in the 1980s, most archeologists believed the ancient wheel came to be in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, but the latest archeological discoveries prove that it most likely arose in the Eastern European country of Ukraine instead. According to recent archeological research, the wheel is much older than most academics originally thought, too. By employing carbon-dating to determine the ages of various items recovered from the Carpathian Mountains, archeologists discovered that the same sorts of wheels their own cars spin upon are the products of an idea that arose sometime between 3950 and 3650 BC. The use of these prehistoric wheels predicts a longstanding phenomenon: Whether one rides in a battle-worn chariot or a freshly painted Corvette, a decent set of wheels buys its owners a moment in the spotlight.

Before ancient and modern roads were respectively crowded by chariots and Teslas, though, the simple, copper-carrying wagon put wooden wheels to the test. According to historian Richard Bulliet, these “Carpathian mine carts” are the earliest forebears of contemporary cars. During the Copper Age, people used these carts to carry copper from the Carpathian mountainside in order to fashion it into useful tools later. Soon, people from various regions, including Europe, Mesopotamia, and even the Pontic Steppe, which is located in Eastern European countries and Russia, could be found with these newly fashioned “wagons.” They put their new wheels to work while harvesting, traveling, and even warring.

After a thousand-year lapse in innovation, the year 2000 BC witnessed the wheel take on yet another new role and at last, hit its stride. Similar to the wagons that Mesopotamian monarchs paraded on during periods of war, chariots arose as new tools of power and confidence. With horses at the lead, the most advanced early chariots allowed their riders to travel up to 25 mph, destroying foes and rival forces with efficiency. Despite the benefits these chariots created for armies like the Hittites and the Egyptians, just like the wagon, they slowly declined in use. Over time, chariots grew too cumbersome for effective battle. Thankfully for their owners, though, the shining image that arrived with their chariots still remained. In fact, the famous chariot racer Gaius Appuleius Diocles profited immensely from his skilled charioteering, banking the equivalent of $100 million from his appearances and proving that wheels are often worth far more than they seem.

The world of wooden wheels, wagons, and even chariots may seem unthinkably distant, but understanding how each creation came to exist provides a revealing glimpse into a contemporary world that isn’t entirely different.

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During the first century, citizens of the Roman Empire watched the influence of the horse trample that of their previously beloved chariot. At the time, unless one was a wealthy, gown-laden woman, using anything besides a horse to get from one place to another was a social faux pas. Years later, the medieval poet Chrétien de Troyes took note of this trend, writing in his work The Knight of the Cart, that “any knight is disgraced throughout the land after being in a cart.” For centuries, this stigma stuck. Finally, in the 1500s, as men glimpsed a shining new vehicle called the “kocsi,” one you may recognize as a horse-pulled “coach,” they looked at their long-forsaken wheels anew. Society’s most prominent members and eventually their less wealthy counterparts began using these part-horse, part-wheeled contraptions, inevitably making way for an indecorous dilemma: what Tom Standage calls “the great horse manure crisis.” 

Put simply, coach travelers of the 19th-century definitely didn’t want to get stuck in traffic. Instead of a noisy barrage of horns and frustrating stop-and-go speed, passengers were met with a different kind of annoyance: smell. In 1890, frazzled city goers in London and New York traveled through roads filled with 300,000 and 150,000 horses respectively, and their presence definitely didn’t go unnoticed. Multiply those numbers by the daily 22-pounds of waste every horse generates, and it’s little wonder cities found themselves in a rough situation. To make matters worse, this problem was more than simply an eyesore or an assault on passengers’ noses. It came with the threat and eventual reality of various ailments, both for riders and their dutiful horses. 

Despite the death of many of these animals, instances of disease, and the all-around undesirable situation of the late 1800s, life without these horse-powered vehicles seemed impossible. In 1872, following a brief though revelatory period in which many horses were lost to equine influenza, The Nation and various other news outlets and periodicals said what everyone else was already thinking: Horses were indispensable to travelers at the time, and losing them would prove detrimental to everyone. And yet, the dilemma was clear: The landscape was growing worse with every hoof-trodden step. Amid an evolving environment of new transportation innovations, such as the train and even the bicycle, the late 19th century saw its silver lining in one idea in particular.

Many people called this sputtering newcomer the “horseless carriage,” and newspapers like the Horseless Age and the Los Angeles Times remarked upon its seemingly countless benefits. Though the smell of their roadways thankfully improved, these writers and the horseless carriage riders of the late 19th century were a bit too optimistic about their newborn “car.” Unfortunately, despite the ease and efficiency it created for many of its drivers, over the coming century, the car would prove just as troublesome as the horse.

In the United States and Europe during the 20th century, the car had a difficult beginning. Rash new drivers enraged the likes of Woodrow Wilson and compelled the writer Kenneth Grahame to create the character of Mr. Toad as an illustration of their foolishness. But with the implementation of strict protocols and lowered costs, the appeal of these gleaming new inventions eventually trumped onlookers’ frustrations. When the bright young businessman Henry Ford graced the market, buyers became even more starry-eyed at those wondrous new cars.

In America in 1908, a basic car cost drivers a total of $2,834, which amounts to a price tag of $80,000 today. Like the chariots and early coaches that came before them, these were often marketed as shortcuts to better reputations in polite society. Those with the biggest bank accounts laid claim on their new rides, leaving others to stare longingly in their midst. But then, the Ford Motor Company arrived. In October of 1908, the car market witnessed a new option pop up on ads and posters, and this one wasn’t simply another bankruptcy waiting to happen. The now-mythologized “Model T” was a countercultural phenomenon. In an age in which companies exploited the car’s allure, Ford shot straight with potential buyers. Ford’s newly named “universal car” went for $850 in its first days, blending the benefits of the two most popular vehicles on the scene at the time. By 1923, over half the cars traveling throughout the country were the indomitable, black, Model T. By then, it cost only $298. 

Ford’s secret was due in part to a little trick he picked up while watching workers in a Chicago meatpacking company. In 1914, Ford established what everyone now knows as a “moving assembly line” in his company’s procedures, granting them the ability to create enough cars (one every three minutes) to populate the entire nation, not just the driveways of the socialites. Nearly as quickly as it was made on that assembly line, Ford’s Model T fell out of fashion. Ironically, the cost, image, and availability that became Ford’s signature made the vehicle appear too easy to acquire. If everyone has one then maybe they aren’t so special, after all.

In the meantime, General Motors drove in the blind spot of the Ford Motor Company. Though both companies shared the same birth year (1908), for the first portion of the 20th century, Ford feared no competition from GM. But when Ford started to crumble, GM soon swooped in to attract Ford’s disillusioned drivers. Originally composed of a handful of companies, including Buick, Oakland, Oldsmobile, Scripps-Booth, Sheridan, Cadillac, and Chevrolet, which were sold at an array of costs and in a variety of styles, GM threw Ford’s previously successful business practices to the wind. As Bandage notes, GM exploited the “vehicle-as-status-symbol” trend, gaining a still unrivaled 10-percent share in the American economy and driving circles around Ford’s Model T.

Cadillacs and Model Ts aside, both GM and Ford influenced market operations a century later. In the face of even the plainest of cars, buyers developed an itch for the steering wheel. Piling up like waves of rush hour traffic, these early drivers grew entranced. And it wouldn’t be long before culture collided with their shortsighted whims.

Cities filled with pollution, reservoirs emptied of oil, land cleared for parking lots—many people envision gloomy images when considering the effects of contemporary cars. But, there’s a completely different side to the car’s tale than people typically take into account. You’ve probably seen the beloved 1978 film Grease, for instance. Almost as sparkling as Danny Zuko’s hair, the movie’s mid-20th-century rides are pivotal to the events that befall its characters. Though it’s often fantastic, ridiculous, and wildly unrealistic, Grease provides a small window into a few ways that automobiles altered daily life. In the wake of an expanding quantity of vehicles produced by companies like Ford and GM, the 1940s witnessed the rise of a group of people for whom cars were a necessary part of life—driving to the movies, grabbing a milkshake, or taking a trip to the local Piggly Wiggly were the norm now. Not only did cars make this new reality possible, but they ensured that it prevailed into the 21st century, too.

For the group of young adults that a 1944 edition of Life magazine dubbed “teen-agers,” automobiles proved especially impactful. Prior to the 1920s, encounters between young lovers were typically limited. Unable to travel to romantic destinations or even a decent movie theater, teens were confined to “calling” on one another, opting to meet beneath the roof of a young lady’s parents instead. The concept of “dating” was a long-awaited innovation for these young adults, and it was made possible by the car. Instead of making anxious small talk with their parents, now the young and in-love could travel anywhere they liked. Beginning in the 1930s, one of their favorite hotspots was the drive-in movie theater, a venue that provided them with a perfect blend of mediocre entertainment and romantic seclusion.

And, if teens got tired of watching those typically lackluster movies, cars also granted them the ability to grab some food with ease. Jesse Kirby’s 1921 Pig Stand is the earliest form of what Standage calls a “drive-up restaurant.” In a rather telling and still relevant statement, Kirby declared, “People with cars are so lazy, they don’t want to get out of them.” And so, he made sure they didn’t have to. In Kirby’s model, employees hustled outside to deliver drivers’ food to them with unprecedented speed. Later, in 1948, the restaurant In-N-Out Burger conceived of what would become the hallmark of the newborn fast-food industry: the “drive-through.” With this innovation, there was hardly any waiting at all. Drivers then (and now) simply drive up, roll down their windows, and receive their food. 

Throughout the mid-20th century, the sway of the car seemed inexhaustible. Prompting the creation of interesting venues and places to journey to, automobiles enabled a lifestyle that’s still present (though perhaps steadily stalling) today.

Recent years have witnessed contemporary culture shun the car and many of its formerly popular stops. In fact, the percentage of licensed drivers has gradually tumbled over the years, proving that automobiles are running out of fuel. According to experts like Volkmar Denner of the manufacturing company Robert Bosch, the year 2017 was perhaps the automobile’s last time in culture’s good graces. A study released by the European Union that same year reveals that though many people have lost esteem for their cars, one group is especially to blame for the vehicle’s decline. Young adults once were obsessed with cars. Now, they are dissatisfied. The so-called “peak car” period is over, and like the civilizations that came before, society is beginning to engineer some adjustments. Along with the addition of automated vehicles, electric cars, Uber, and improved public transportation, the world of driving is undergoing a massive refurbishment. And, it’s one that may upend the entire market.

If you live in or travel to places like Helsinki, Antwerp, Birmingham, Singapore, or Berlin, for instance, you never have to even own a car. Instead, you can use any number of apps running on a program called “mobility as a service,” or MaaS. With the power of the smartphone, these apps group together various transportation options, including bikes, cabs, trains, scooters, and cars, to create a kind of virtual bus stop for users. On apps like Finland’s Whim, people can log onto their accounts and schedule a personalized trip, or participate in a range of subscription offerings tailored to their specific needs. Other outlets like Jelbi, Citymapper, and Transit create the same opportunities for travelers with or without traditional transportation options, each with the purpose of reducing automobile usage. Interestingly, companies like Ford and BMW haven’t given up and are instead staking their claim in the lucrative $10 trillion dollar space by introducing their own versions of these apps.

Programs that use MaaS offer various benefits to participating cities and culture as a whole, including fewer environmental strains, more affordable means of transportation, and even the opportunity to adjust services according to place and time. Programs localized in college towns, for instance, benefit their populations by offering more bikes, scooters, and other easy means of transport for students to make it across campus quickly. The app Whim has one such offering for student users already, providing easy access to services like bikes and buses. Additionally, city initiatives that seek to transform the landscape and create more opportunities for walkers, runners, and other non-drivers to enjoy the space can also benefit from these programs. With them, they can shift their services toward a more active populace and maintain dependable transportation in the meantime.

Whether city-goers want to improve their personal health, or simply avoid the bills and responsibilities that come with car ownership, a reliable handheld catalogue of services helps users widen their transportation experience. With this, as some people opt to bike to work, take a bus to the store, or share a cab with another traveler, the reality of transportation will grow much more diverse and far healthier for people and their communities, too.

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