Wheels
The wheel counts among the handful of inventions that have made immense difference to our human story. What's odd is that, like the other 'tipping point' inventions (let's list for example controlling fire, making string, making pottery) nobody as yet can be sure where or when the breakthrough first happened.
What archaeologists can say is that around 3500 BC wheels start occurring all along the contact / trade routes that existed at the time. And helpfully, we have the earliest dated wheel in the world so far, found in marshland 20km south of Ljubljana in Slovenia. (see left)
Carefully carpentered from ash planks with oak cross-bracing, there's no way this wheel - or other wheels made at this date (about 3350 BC) - represents the first wheel ever. This is a well-honed, familiar product made by a time-served craft-worker.
Which begs the question, how long before this wheel got broken and chucked in a ditch was the first wheel invented?
What archaeologists can say is that around 3500 BC wheels start occurring all along the contact / trade routes that existed at the time. And helpfully, we have the earliest dated wheel in the world so far, found in marshland 20km south of Ljubljana in Slovenia. (see left)
Carefully carpentered from ash planks with oak cross-bracing, there's no way this wheel - or other wheels made at this date (about 3350 BC) - represents the first wheel ever. This is a well-honed, familiar product made by a time-served craft-worker.
Which begs the question, how long before this wheel got broken and chucked in a ditch was the first wheel invented?