I guess we've sort of elided over the "to" that many other languages maintain to indicate motion.
I tend to think it's the opposite: "to" came to the rescue when the nouns' case endings disappeared in English. Even in Latin, "in" and "out" (ex) do not command the same case. But the Romans had their ablative to hand. In German, "to" is not needed because we still have the dative ("aus dem Korb" movement or no movement).