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Why Did It Take So Long To Invent the Wheel?
Hugh Pickens writes "Wheels are the archetype of a primitive, caveman-level technology, and we tend to think that inventing the wheel was the number one item on man's to-do list after learning to walk upright. But LiveScience reports that it took until the bronze age (3500 BC), when humans were already casting metal alloys and constructing canals and sailboats, for someone to invent the wheel-and-axle, a task so challenging archaeologists say it probably happened only once, in one place. The tricky thing about the wheel isn't a cylinder rolling on its edge, but figuring out how to connect a stable, stationary platform to that cylinder. 'The stroke of brilliance was the wheel-and-axle concept,' says David Anthony, author of The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. To make a fixed axle with revolving wheels, the ends of the axle have to be nearly perfectly smooth and round, as did the holes in the center of the wheels. The axles have to fit snugly inside the wheels' holes, but not too snug, or there will be too much friction for the wheels to turn. But the real reason it took so long is that whoever invented the wheel would have needed metal tools to chisel fine-fitted holes and axles. 'It was the carpentry that probably delayed the invention until 3500 BC or so, because it was only after about 4000 BC that cast copper chisels and gouges became common in the Near East.'"
That's why it took so long to invent the wheel.
-- Cheers!
Since there was no patent law, there was no incentive to innovate, and technological progress stagnated.
THAT'S why they're always telling me not to reinvent it...
But also the wheel needed an application. While people lived in small villages, there wasn't much of a need to move things over large enough distances to require vehicles. And when things were moved across the countryside, there may not have been surfaces for wheels. Most of us could build a wheel and axle to use on a modern road, but how about building one for a narrow, muddy track through the forest?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
We'd either have to pay tribute to the patent maker, be sued for it, or be driving around on octagons.
God spoke to me
Its because everyone was spending their time in the bath, getting hair cuts and discussing what to do with their wealth after making leaves the official currency. What's more, the story glosses over the most important part of the process, deciding what color the wheel should be.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Because the installed base of Luddites were still using Firefox 3.6.x?
Global Cave Warming
Steve Jobs wasn't born until 1955?
Bah - except you don't...
There are many ways to construct a wheel/axle combination that don't require precision tooling...
Use of slots rather than holes... Forked branch style notch rests.. etc
Extend the axle past an over size slot then mount a disk tied/lashed.pegged over the end for alignment
Older systems used a wedge arrangement in the axle to give an adjustable attachment/brace for the end bearing plate
Durability of these however might continue to be an issue
...it doesn't take long for people to reinvent the wheel all the time.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
That's a bit of wordplay- same story as to when the boat was invented: it was whenever someone had wood, and noticed that it can take a load (and still float)
Now a shaft going through a firm hole that stays in place while it rotates and has a wheel attached yes, it is a different kind of invention, but the concept of "wheel" was there already- heavy things were carried by rolling them onto logs. True, not the most elegant solution, but beats the hell out of having your slaves die of exhaustion.
Puns aside, what puzzles me more is a) why kites where not used more excessively for lifting objects, especially since the sail was known (perhaps they just dinae think of it?) and b) why there was no industrial revolution after Ancient Greece since they had steam engines
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
When was the flour mill invented? I mean that kind with a rotating stone wheel on top of another stone.
Archeology... the science of guessing and calling it the truth if enough people agree.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has written some interesting things about early society. One thing he notes, is that there was an "original affluent society" of sorts - hunter gatherers from 40,000 years ago often worked less hours a week than, say, a worker in a Foxconn factory making iPhones, or even say a network administrator being paged at 3 AM because the network is down. From the hunter gatherers of then, to the few surviving bands in South America, Africa and Asia today, the hunter gatherers often have to work less hours per week to provide for themselves than the people with their hands on the most sophisticated technology we have available today. One may ask why the wheel should be invented in the first place.
Another interesting thing Sahlins points out is this. Occupy Wall Street and the like protests against "the 1%", which in many cases are heirs of the type portrayed in the documentary "Born Rich" or the like. People, like say, the UK's royal family, where it has been so many generations since anyone worked, that those ancestors are lost in memory. In other words, there are people who do no work, and are living (and often living quite a high life) off of the wealth they take from the work time of those who do work. This would not be possible without surplus. If I am a hunter gatherer, and all of the work I do is to feed myself, my children, and perhaps the very elderly in my band, there is no surplus left over. But once the agricultural revolution happened, there was inevitably surplus, and thus the possibility of a class of priests, kings and such who did not need to work. Sahlins point is the agricultural revolution was not needed for this surplus to exist. Hunter-gatherers CAN work 80 hours, and support idlers who do not work. But hunter-gatherers simply don't do this - everyone able bodied works. And as many anthropologists etc. have pointed out - the agricultural revolution is a mystery, because the techniques of hunting/gathering had advanced sufficiently by 10000 years ago that they were far superior, in the short-term back then, then farming. Farming back then was a much worst way of getting food than hunting/gathering. It took many, many years to breed say teosinte grasses into maize/corn, domesticate animals and that sort of thing.
Why should the wheel be created. I am watching the TV debates and hearing about "job creators", which I guess are rich people. Then I watch birds flying around and realize they don't need anyone or anything to create jobs for them, they are self-sufficient. It's the majority of humans who in are social structure are dependent on these wealthy "job creators" to create jobs so that they can survive. A bizarre concept which early hunter-gatherers didn't have to worry about either - they were as free as birds in being self-sufficient and not dependent on these technology-empowered "job creators". No wonder the wheel wasn't invented for so many years.
Is that in the new world, the wheel and beasts of burden were only used in limited capacities. The Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas were on par with western civilizations in other ways, though.
What about indoor plumbing and sewage? I always find it hard to believe people were willing to put up with the smell of shit 24/7 up until not very long ago. The technology was already there for over a thousand years but nobody applied it to the task.
Hunter gatherers would have had plenty of use for a wheel, if you were to use your argument. Mankind may have settled down into small villages eventually, but they still went on days/weeks long hunting trips. You wouldn't want to carry a large prey with you on a sled or on your shoulders, if you would have a cart of some sort to transport it on. I'd say your argument doesn't really hold up if you look at it a bit more closely.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Because they wanted to make sure they got it right the first time?
Old wheels just transfer sliding friction to a controllably-greased axle. Wheel 1.1 is different in principle, with friction-free roller bearings in the axle. "Grandpa rolled things on logs, so put the logs in the bearings".
At the museum we saw they had round disks with holes that they kept on sticks and cords for hundreds of years.
Also some kind of rolling pin thingy.
They never clicked to the idea of the wheel tho.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Dodn't you read the wikipedia article?
Hero of Alexandria's Aeolipile had nothing to do with "Ancient Greece", it was invented/constructed in what we call the first century AD, during the ROMAN era, about a thousand years ago. The Aeolipile was little more than an executives desk toy, made to show a principle. There was no way to take a drive off it and the system has little torque and so can't power anything.
The Romans, let alone the Greeks before them didn't have the technology to cast and forge large iron objects essential to constructing the parts of even an ineffective steam engine. Look at the history of guns, a "similar" pressure vessel system. Gunpowder entered Europe in the Middle Ages and at the beginning it was only possible to cast small iron guns, often full of fatal (to the gunners) flaws. Some cannon were even made of wood, bound with iron hoops like a barrel, perhaps why a gun barrel is called a gun barrel...
The technology to cast large bronze and iron artefacts, with any degree of precision only developed in the 15th-16th centuries (again mainly driven by war), and the tools needed to manipulate large masses of metal took even longer to appear, so its not surprising that what we call the industrial revolution showed its first glimmerings of life towards the end of the 16th century and matured slowly during the 17th and 18th centuries, towards the end of which, the steam engine appeared.
Industrial revolutions depend on a lot more than a Graeco-Romano philosophical desktop toy!
They would still be sued, as Apple has shown that you can patent shapes. And an octagon still has the look and feel of a circle, so they are doubly fucked.
you could make a shape with several thousand sides and patent that
Bullshit. I saw a documentary way back in the 60's that clearly showed the wheel and axle existing in the stone age. It was called The Flintstones.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
As time goes on and we discover new things, I put less and less trust into what others have determined to be true about the past and what goes on outside of earth (the two things we have not seen yet). There is too much speculation and a lot of the theories are based on too many other things that are theories themselves. Estimates of what matter exists and how much of it is "out there" are all over the place. some millions of times less or more then what others think.
...researching the wheel usually isn't a priority for me. Chariots are useless units.
Oldest example of wheel and axle ca 5100 BC. And it is a safe bet older examples will be found. By the way, the Wikipedia article usefully points out taht the value of a wheel is greatly diminished without well constructed roads to run it on.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Cause they didn't have no roads, silly!
Your stated assumption that wheels were number 1 on to do list is really bogus, surely no. 1's were the blade, the club, the dart, the needle, the sack, the pot, medicine and let's not forget fire. and language.
Besides it's quite possible that simpler wheel designs were developed earlier and died out in obscurity.
That was due to energy density. Our industrial revolution was accompagned and facilitated by an increase of energy density : coal usage.
"a task so challenging archaeologists say it probably happened only once, in one place."
Am i missing something, or don't we know that it happened at least twice since native americans made small toys with wheels on them? Although i'd be willing to believe that it happened just once in the americas and just once in europe/africa/asia.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Sex and alcohol were both invented before the wheel. Once we had those, everything else could wait a few thousand years.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
It took so long because the Earth is only 6000 years old, not billions of years like scientists want you to think.
It was invented in 4000 B.C. and we're in year 2000. You do the math. Hint: the answer is 6000.
I think this proves once and for all that God exists and created the Earth. It also debunks evolution and probably more science conspiracies. A good day for Christianity.
Hey man, wheel and su'ing go together!
Be relentless!
This is probably also the reason the History Channel is so confused by the ability of prehistoric peoples to move very large rocks. It turns out, it is very difficult to build a wheel and axel that is strong enough to support thousands of tons. In modern times, that means that there is a huge incentive to use smaller rocks and fasten them together. For more primitive techniques, pulling more weight just means having more people to do the pulling.
The wheel was invented several times, but the first few inventors didn't have practical implementations in mind. So it took many patent expiration generations for it to find common use.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
How long have people used grinding on jewels? It is true that life without good tools has limits but a bit of sand and a drop or two of water can be used to cut a precise hole in stone even if wood is used to push against the sand slurry. And once one has a nice hole in a rock that hole can be used to grind and axle of hardwood or even of stone. I suspect that the wheel was not valued as there are so few natural places that a wheel can be used. Sand, mud, loam, fertile soil, rocks or even hills and gullies all do a pretty fair job of making a wheel useless. I wonder if there are old drawings of cooking where an animal is turned on a spit over a fire. That is a crude form of a wheel and if a primitive person could understand cooking by rotating a pole over a fire then he probably understood the concept could be used on the ground to move things about. One thing that is obvious is that ancients all over the world had great skills at moving large, difficult objects. I don't think we are out of design battles at all in striving to find better ways to move objects over land.
Or in one of these
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
Why is the wheel considered so important?
I suspect it's a western-only or maybe American-only thing, as the Japanese do not seem to consider it "the most important early invention", at least to the extent Americans do.
It was really strange seeing "the wheel" used as an example of "the beginning of technology" in a lot of American cartoons, which you don't see in Japanese ones. I kind of suspect it has something to do with American car-centric culture, and them assuming primitive wheels were as important in their time as they are today.
What countries do you guys have experience in, and do they consider the wheel as important as Americans do?
you could make a shape with several thousand sides and patent that
Actually, the concept was employed by Poul Anderson in his story The three-cornered wheel, in which a constant width polygon (the simplest being a Reuleaux triangle) was employed to circumvent a religious prohibition on circular objects.
There is also a three-dimensional equivalent (constant-width polyhedron). A version of the Reuleaux triangle with rounded corners is occasionally encountered in industrial design. People keep reinventing it, just like square wheels, etc.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The marketing department just couldn't figure out what colour people wanted the wheel to be. (To be honest, the audience included loads of telephone sanitisers)
It was delayed because Fred Flintstone was wasting too much time on Facerock playing Dinoville.
No, quite untrue. As any fule kno, the wheel was patented in 2001
Google is reinventing the wheel too in many aspects.
Citation Needed
In addition, is a pottery wheel really a "wheel"? It looks more like a turntable to me; I never would have though to refer to a lazy susan as "wheel", that's for sure.
Probably because beer was invented first, and no one really got around to it. I wonder who got the first Chariot DUI summons?
Dear slashdot editors. Please make it is more obvious which of the 4 links in the abstract is TFA.
Don't make me click through 3 background links before I find the one containing the story.
"Bluetooth is the archetype of a primitive, 21s-century-level technology, and we tend to think that inventing Bluetooth was the number one item on man's to-do list after the end of the second millennium. But LiveScience reports..."
(Or the smartphone.)
It's probably even simpler: Without a system of paved roads a wheel isn't all that useful.
When the wife of the chief complained about the 8 bumps per revolution making her sick he invented the square wheel, it causes only half the bumps per turn!
But when the next tribe's chief's wife saw it she wanted something similar or better and they came up with the triangular wheel.
Story goes some dofus tried a wheel with only two bumps per turn but it never got off the drawing board.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Then I'll have at least a dozen apps with which to poke your eyes out. Or, to poke a dead animal with. Or do a sword fight with a cubical dweller.
Oh Apple, what would we do without you?
... and that tells you everything you need to know.
Africans also didn't invent 99% of everything that you use today (and probably take for granted).
Why is that?
Carpentery as a prerequisite for the wheel you say...? Actually I think they got that one right. Isn't bronze working before the wheel in the tech-tree?
and don't touch that iPad. The move to agriculture is the move to a sedentary lifestyle. A house instead of a cave, the possibility to own heavy objects. The possibility that your child will become a non-working person. Hey! The American dream!
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
The wheel was invented by Apple (Adam and Eve's tech startup), but unfortunately was rendered useless because Eden was a walled-garden ecosystem, and they lost access to all their apps when the site moderator brought the banhammer down on them...
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
More likely they simply had a much better invention...slaves. Same reason why all the basics were there to make steam power during the height of the Greek and Roman empires but it was only used to make parlor tricks and toys for the tables of the rich. When you have slaves to do the toting for you why bother? I wouldn't be surprised if that is why so many of our earliest leaps of technology came from desert lands like Syria and Egypt, lots of desert plus nomadic tribes equals less chance to capture slaves and a lot more work to feed the ones you have.
To me the more interesting question is 'How many times have we had to reinvent things?' because we see all these dark periods where some religion, or some plague or other disaster comes along and we end up taking these huge stumbles backwards that take centuries to recover from. for example we know now that during the height of the Roman empire they had VERY advanced mathematics, used gold sutures to help prevent infection (even if they didn't know why it worked), used lithium in the form of baths to treat the mentally ill, even had taxis that charged by the mile. Then came the rise of the Christians who promptly destroyed anything that didn't have the word Jesus on it and we were sent backwards by centuries. Not knocking the Christians as it seemed like every religion did the same thing, hell we see the Muslims trying their damnedest to do the same even today.
hell I wouldn't be surprised if the first couple of guys that came up with the wheel weren't promptly strapped to it and set on fire for being witches, would be about right considering here we are in the 21st century and we still have people killing each other over what some goat herder wrote on a piece of sheep's ass 1000+ years ago.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
A man pounds his fist on his fancy desk. "God damn cars! They shoulda been invented sooner now we'll never roll this shit over by next quarter!"
"What shit, Bob?"
"Shiiiiit!"
An old guy is pulling his long grey hair out by the seashore, watching the cruise liners sink. "Fucking pottery wheels! Things should been here like a million years ago!"
A little kid sits at a console but there are no games for it, so he punches buttons, hard, and watches static. "stupid spinning wheela and looms, I could be out earning money and buying real actual interaction with my parents when they beat me up take my money and run off to spend it at the rum parlors. I could be experiencing the real live action of losing my limbs to the looms. But rotating gears and rolling presses are just too darn slow to make reality come true! Oops, I lost! Oh, mannnn!"
Rack after rack of goods sits empty. Bakers with their arms crossed stare at the lak of gainful employment. "Cocksucking milling stones! Late again!"
Small blond children weep over handfuls of tulips and tall, angular Dutch women tear off their clothes on the hilltops. "Fucking windmills!"
[Voice over] "What the hell. Are things just not Turning out right? Pissed cause wheels just take too long -- SO long ... like 2pi -- to get here, already, in a vicious cycle? well take a stand. In your next REM state, go to change.org and sign the petition to retroactively push the invention of the wheel back in time to the breaking of symmetry. When the birth of mankind rolls around, they can experience the fuller life that an early experience with wheels can bring. They'll be more well-rounded individuals, better prepared for life's challenges.
"By heckling numerous members of congress as well as carefully chosen delegates from world governments, along with scores of prominents sports figures and actresses, showdog owners, the lady that checked your groceries, your clothes-wearing classmates, a large spider that has you frozen in terror making it difficult for you to breath or to wake up, this change.org petition will ensure that Our voices are heard and that your teeth won't fall out as you progressively grow younger.
"With your help, we can turn this:
"[Bob]: Shiiiiiiit!
"... Into this:
"[Fred]: Willmaaaa!"
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Yeah! I've never got why they put wheels on farm machinery like tractors before either.
Groan...! :)
It's probably even simpler: Without a system of paved roads a wheel isn't all that useful.
Um, yes it is. Small carts work on almost any terrain and can carry plenty of stuff.
No sig today...
The book came out in 2007 - why did it take Soulskill so long to post? Now get off my axle.
Just the washing instructions on life's rich tapestry
the first couple of guys that came up with the wheel weren't promptly strapped to it and set on fire for being witches,
They probably just starved to death because they'd wasted so much time on something of no value.
Like most things,wheels weren't perfected instantaneously. Early wheels didn't have nice bearings and tryres, so they wore out quickly, after just a few Km.
Hunter gatherers travel more than 40Km/day, so wheels are useless to them. It toook the development of agriculture and settlements before wheels were worth using. In fact, oddly enough, without hermaphrodites, wheels were unlikely to ever be more than toys.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
But within the band, they were very tightly bound by social customes, mores and taboos. Bragging, hoarding food, keeping food sources secret, keeping knowledge secret for personal benefit etc are strongly discouraged. You live in the group and mostly even the most able hunter or the most perceptive gatheress (men hunted and women gathered mostly) did not get any extra food rations as reward.
By the way, the Cain and Abel story is quite similar to the stories in Egyptian mythology and Mesopotamian mythologies. Cain was the farmer and Abel was the hunter. The story is considered to be some kind of folk memory of the struggles between hunters and farmers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's because they invented beer first and they were smart enough to worry about drinking and driving..
Besides, hauling stuff is what slaves were for. And the reason people learned shipping/sailing first was because that was where the people lived and how they traded. I think the wheel was probably invented to deal with a problem: either piracy on the water forced goods to start moving over land. Or exotic and valuable materials needed to be hauled across areas that did not have a shipping route.
The wheel was invented to solve a problem. Not because its cool.
Here is the earliest published prior art: the Standard Of Ur 2600â"2400 BC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_of_Ur_-_War.jpg/
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
or be driving around on octagons.
Actually, the wheel in circular shape is just the most common type as it is pretty fit for a frequently found - albeit boring - shape of surface to ride on, i.e. a flat surface, in an over-simplified manner called a "road". ;-)
If the surface (the "road", in a more general sense) given had been designed properly (and skilfully), a square wheel might just be the right shape for a smooth ride on it:
http://mathtourist.blogspot.com/2011/05/riding-on-square-wheels.html :-)
... and is often the case the real blocker was materials and tooling.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
In fact, oddly enough, without hermaphrodites, wheels were unlikely to ever be more than toys.
...what?
I was just going to say the same thing. What do people who have both X and Y chromosomes have to do with anything. Let me guess this was an instance of auto-correct gone wrong.
I would argue that wheels (for transportation) are more or less useless without roads, so that the important invention was the road network. If that is true, it is no accident that the wheel was invented during the first period of large empires, as they built road networks, nor that wheel use tended to die out after the fall of the Roman Empire, when the Roman Roads fell into ruin.
What's this reference to Christianity? Everybody knows that 4000 B.C. is when every Civilization founds their first city. Sid Meier says so.
If it's not, I wonder if it will get modded insightful?
does not exist in nature or, naturally, in our perception. Consider how long it took to use the steam engine for rotational motion. And I don't mean the railroad engine. It seems natural and obvious today, but it still isn't. I remember watching a baby stare in uttter facination at a piece of cereal twirled over and over again on a tray. She showed a concentration and determination to understand that far exceeded anything expected from one her age. I was impressed. But obviously this was something her visual abilities could not comprehend.
E Proelio Veritas.
Oh come on!!! They CLEARLY had invented the wheel and axle concept before then....and chiseled out of stone, no less. Haven't you ever seen the Flintstones? It's amazing what could be done with dinosaur labor.
Wrong about why wheels took so long to invent Wheels are useless without flat roads Eg Look at primitive tribes today in forests. Wheels dont help them
Then came the rise of the Christians who promptly destroyed anything that didn't have the word Jesus on it and we were sent backwards by centuries. Not knocking the Christians as it seemed like every religion did the same thing, hell we see the Muslims trying their damnedest to do the same even today.
There are also some Christians who would like to do the same even today...
"Why you shouldn't type stuff on a phone or tablet - the slashdot version".
...what?
Wandering nomads would collect the best fruits and grains and cary them to their campsites. Being creatures of habit, they'd use the same campsites every season, and once they were there, inevitably they would spill some grain or seeds. Gradually, over the years, the areas around those campsites became more and more productive as the best seeds sprouted. Eventually, millenia later, a few of the nomads stopped wandering and stayed at the productive campsites, tended the crops and invented wheels.
At least they did if the plants were hermaphroditic and bred true. If the plants were unable to self-pollinate (as in Australia and few other regions), there were no producive campsites to remain in, and the nomads continued wandering. Wheels were amusing playthings.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
It's the same reason every invention takes a while: man had to figure out a way for the wheel to get you laid or kill other people with them. St. Catherine may have got both ends of that one.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
it was wheelie hard.
All flowering plants are hermaphrodites. Self-pollenization is an unrelated issue.
...scoff at the very notion.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I can think of two reasons off the top of my head.
1. There just weren't many people around. When you only have a couple million people on the planet and 99.999% of them are busy trying to grow something to eat, it doesn't leave much free time to come up with new ways of doing things.
2. Early patent trolls. "Dude, your 'wheel' infringes on our 'log roller' patent. DIE!!"
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
A wheel isn't very useful if you don't have a smooth enough road to roll it on. With what passed for roads during most of human history, a wheel just wouldn't be practical. Instead, they used a travois, which basically meant dragging a couple of poles behind a horse with your cargo lashed to the poles.
The wheel too closely resembled Apple's patent on rounded corners, so it was squelched.
You can see from their fairly good records the wheel (and horse) was not used their first thousand years of dynasties, expect on toys. Not for the large pyramid construction, unless you count rollers. The Hittites, possible the first Indo-European group in the area, used horses and chariots as did lots of other Indo-European groups. (Moses happened after the Hittites, so THAT movie is accurate.) The Indo-Europeans may have co-developed the cart and horse labor technology.
Wheels are worthless unless you have decent roads. In order for the invention of a wheel to be worthwhile, you need a decent, flat path, without too many ruts, to drive your vehicles across. Meanwhile the Incas has excellent roads, but since they ran up and down mountains, wheels might help you for half the journey, be become a liability on the other half.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Because they're worthless without some sort of, well, fucking road ???
If you had no experience with wheels, I think you would intuitively believe that the friction at the axle would be just as bad as a sledge sliding on the ground. What's really required to understand how a wheel works is how the wheel reduces frictional force at the wheel tread by acting as a lever. That's not a simple concept.
Try researching monotheism, you'll get Gunpowder and the wheel takes much longer. See, Sid Meier agrees.
It probably means "oh damn you iPhone autocorrect."
While a wheel freely turning on an axle would be quite an achievement, it's quite easy to attach two wheels to a single axle, then allow the axle to turn under the platform by trapping it between two blocks, or inside a "bearing," such as a block of wood with a notch in it, with the notch side fixed to the platform.
The wheel was invented several times, but the first few inventors didn't have practical implementations in mind. So it took many patent expiration generations for it to find common use.
Actually, the wheel was invented right away, but the Original Makers kept getting their copyright on it renewed, and it wasn't till 3500BC that it finally made it to public domain.
Be seeing you...
I sometimes take a turn or two to move my starting Settler to a better location.
(if I start with two Settlers, the 1st builds a city, the 2nd builds roads and explores for a 2nd city site)
Also, The Wheel doesn't require prerequisities and sometimes the game gives you some early tech to begin with
[My experience is with Civilization II]
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
if you think of all of the reasons that I use wheels today, I doubt that most existing back then. People didn't tend to travel, there either wasn't anywhere to go in your daily life, or it wasn't more than a few football fields. and without an engine, or chains, or another six inventions, wheels wouldn't help. so you still need to hook it up to an animal, and just riding the animal is easier. until you need to haul something. certainly now adays, there are loads to haul, but back then, you didn't farm that much at a time, and blacksmiths didn't make a thousand horseshoes at a time.
so still you're six inventions away from make it worthwhile. you needed distances to cover and loads to haul. it's not that there weren't any, it's that they weren't everyday for every person, and dancing to make it rain was more important than getting the water from the local well.
Well, most "fields" these days are a lot more flat and "road like" than most of the terrain that was around before they invented the wheel.
While *paved* roads are not necessarily required, driving something with wheels through a forest, over mountains or through swampland is pretty much impossible. (Or at least multiple times harder than to just use pack animals or humans to carry the stuff)
I say that considering things in the short-term back then - and I stress that idea of "short term" which I mentioned - going from hunting and gathering to agriculture makes no sense - it is a mystery. Yes, in a long, long, long-term view, going from A to Z might make sense, but it made no sense from back then in the short term. One must also keep in mind that my example of teosinte grass cultivation took place in Mesoamerica, so explanations of this must encompass things like that happening as well.
You say "Why the heck would the agricultural revolution be a mystery?" This makes me assume you are about to explain the answer to the mystery which has puzzled anthropologists for over a century. But you don't, you say "it seems inevitable". This is not really a satisfactory explanation of all the issues involved that satisfies me.
People keep seeming to keep missing this point. My post used the qualifier short-term and talked about the mystery. You point to hunter gatherers from 15000 years ago, and then to agricultural communities of 7000 years ago with domesticated crops and animals. You say "What's more smart - to go hunt wild game, or to find and raise domesticated animals and plants you can eat without having to expend yourself?" and you also talk about a time machine. Yes, a time machine bringing you from 15000 to 7000 years ago might make sense, but what happened between those 8000 years? That is what made no sense. The first farmers had to expend themselves far, far, far, far more than hunter gatherers. You talk about domesticated animals and plants, but there WERE no domesticated animals and plants. THAT is the mystery that has puzzled anthropologists. You say it is no mystery over the long term, but you missed where I said short-term. It may not be a mystery over the long-term, it certainly is a mystery why it happened in the short-term back then.
Having XY makes you a guy, not a hermaphrodite.
Are you sure about that comment? Kiwi plants is one sort I know to be flowering and not hermphrodite. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actinidia_deliciosa#Flowers )
"To make a fixed axle with revolving wheels ..."
They could have started making wheels with a revolving axle like in spinning, potter wheels, wheelbarrows. And suddenly all the explanation does not make much sense.
That makes me think of the Darkwing Duck episode where the dinosaurs had the rubber roads and the stone wheels... it's a massive misapplication of energy and work, even if it is intellectually interesting.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
When discussing why it took so long to invent wheels it is interesting to note that the luggage with wheels was invented in 1972 by a Mr Sadow, who initially had a hard time selling his idea to luggage manufacturers. If you went to a station or an airport before this time you would have seen everyone lifting or perhaps dragging their bags. In retrospect wheels and wheeled bags seem obvious, but it is not obvious before you have seen a lot of other people use it.
yeah, DUI has probably been a problem since it was possible
Phaeton of Greek mythology nearly crashing the sun chariot?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pha%C3%ABton
http://www.cracked.com/article_19688_7-horrifying-historical-origins-famous-corporate-logos.html #4
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Yes, the greeks created steam engines, but it took a long time to learn how to create engine that don't explode that often.
Anyway, the Industrial Revolution wasn't caused by the steam engines. The engines surely had an important paper later, when industrialization was gaining ground, but the revolution started before. If there is one prominent cause of the Industrial Revolution it is the sistematic accumulation (and testing) of knowledge we currently know as "science". And the writters of the time were quick to impersone it on the figure of Newton. Of course, the greek had examples of things that were like science. But it wasn't generalized.
The point in this instance is some orientations will result in a higher probability of high-yield plants breeding true. If that is absent, the opportunity to establish agriculture will be missing.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I think that throughout most of human history, there were no wheels because there were no roads, not even any more-or-less flat enough surfaces to make a wheel worthwhile. Of course, wheels still work on bumpy trails, but not much better than travois or similar apparatus. The wheel needed to be invented simultaneously with the invention of roads on which to use them. Once foot trails became wide enough, long enough, and smooth enough, then the wheel became a worthwhile invention.
Native American's invented wheels as well but they only saw use on toys. http://www.precolumbianwheels.com/ It's easy to verify that wheels were invented independently by multiple cultures.
Since we now know that it was the invention of beer that spurred the invention of agriculture,
It must have been the need for reliable beer wagons which spurred the invention of the wheel.
Why does Slashdot keep posting these blurbs by Hugh Pickens? He re-uses entire phrases and sentences from the links, but they are presented as original words with no quotes and with fragments from one link merged with another. He should at least attribute his blurbs appropriately.
Let's not leave out the credit to all those other religions, who did the much, much worse. What makes Christians unique is that they managed to hold back enough for science to be conserved and even improved upon.
Read Jared Diamond's book to see just how bad things are. Whether we're talking muslims, buddhists, mayans, Incas, or whatever the religion on the pacific and Indian ocean islands were called. Each and every one managed to destroy close to every last iota of written text they could get their hands on. Some, like the mayas and muslims, got quite far ... and then destroyed their progress. Even atheist states aren't innocent in this regard, as ancient athens at one time voted on the order to destroy every book that claimed objects sometimes move in a straight line (only circular trajectories were allowed). Likewise they voted several times to destroy mentions of particular parts of history.
The Christian world by contrast, even in the dark ages, was covered in Libraries containing much more than just the bible, and this was maintained by Christian monks. Even more unique amongst the world's religions : they actually copied non-christian works verbatim, even where they disagreed with canon. This was obviously mentioned in commentaries, but they didn't rewrite the books like muslims did (for example, so did hindus and buddhists). Some muslims go so far as to say that the version from muslim scolars from the middle ages are "really" the original versions.
Some western scholars hold that even the quran itself is such a very badly copied book, a copy of the bible, made in a language of the early companions of the prophet. These guys then proceeded to get nearly all of themselves killed in wars they started, resulting in the stupid fact that they didn't have anyone who spoke the original language (Arameic) the book was written down in. Then they transliterated, picking whatever word was the closest arabic word in a systematic manner, the result of which was written down. Some stories do indeed match word-for-word with ancient eastern bibles, but it is often hard to find these things, because they re-ordered the sentences (from long to short), and left >95% of them out entirely (which is why the quran is such a short and horribly unreadable book). See also, Christopher Hitchens.
Sadly, when it comes to religions, Christians are the top of the line. Which of course doesn't mean that they're particularly supportive of science, just that they can usually resist the apparently very strong human temptation to burn, kill or crucify anyone remotely suspected of having independent ideas.
I know, hindsight bias, but it doesn't seem as bad as the summary makes it sound. Why couldn't you make an axle square to fit into the wheel in the middle, and just add a few more sides on either side, e.g. octagonal at the sides? It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be an improvement.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
People or group of people during that time probably could pull, drag or carry most of the things, I think. Or, They are not handling anything heavy / working on something large scale that is beyond their capacity to pull, drag or carry.
The reason all those things bother you when "survival camping," is that you aren't used to them. Modern society has made you soft. Clearly people in the past were different: if they weren't, why would some have been fine living as Eskimos when surely word had filtered back to them about the paradise to the south where clothing wasn't needed and food abundant and there were plenty of soft, sandy beaches to sit on. Some people must have just not been all that bothered by conditions that we would consider brutal. Hell, I can't even understand why people live in American cities where it snows when there are so many more comfortable places to live! But people do.
I am eagerly awaiting the continuation of this thread!
No. It was developed when humans had free time, were bored, and had access to tools.
If they where too busy surviving, the they wouldn't just stop to invent something.
People think inventions happen in a specific order. Base inventions don't have to.
" without hermaphrodites, wheels were unlikely to ever be more than toys."
you have now won the prize for the stupidest post trying to sound intelligent.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No, the roman did not have 'VERY' advanced mathematics. They didn't even recognize the value of 0, mathematically.
", used gold sutures"
citation.
" help prevent infection (even if they didn't know why it worked),"
Doing something random and getting luck is not a sign of advancement.
" used lithium in the form of baths to treat the mentally ill,"
Happen to have lithium in some springs is not using it in baths to treat the mentally ill. What about dosing? how does enough get into the body?
Bunch of pop culture crap.Learn something.
"Then came the rise of the Christians who promptly destroyed anything that didn't have the word Jesus on it and we were sent backwards by centuries."
It took 3 centuries for Rome to fall. 3 centuries.
"weren't promptly strapped to it and set on fire for being witches"
So you are saying the Wheel wasn't invented until the 1600? because prior to that you had people who cast 'good' spells, and people who cast 'bad' spells*.
But king James didn't like not having a reason to butcher people he had the translation changed from 'Bad spells' to Witches.
As a side note, how anyone can read Exodus and still be a Christian is mind boggling.
*It cold also mean poisoner..but I think that's unlikely in the context.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Important stuff!
My magic sword, extra plate mail, iron ration, a bunch of 10'6" poles, henchmen, my thrown, loot, wenches.
I'm sorry, I have no idea what they made me thing of DnD....probably because the cart was invented around the time I started playing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wheels are not useful in a lot of terrain and on a lot of ground. It takes special circumstances to actually make the wheel seem worthwhile. But once there is a critical mass of wheel users, then people will start to build roads and change the environment.
Then came the rise of the Christians who promptly destroyed anything that didn't have the word Jesus on it and we were sent backwards by centuries. Not knocking the Christians as it seemed like every religion did the same thing, hell we see the Muslims trying their damnedest to do the same even today.
ARF'ING! REALLY?
Christianty had nothing to do with the fall of the Roman Empire and the subsequent "dark age". The Empire became indolent and riven by civil wars where the prize was the throne. The barbarians took a good look and then promptly burned the lot to the ground, repeatedly, until there was nothing left. The extremeties of the Empire rotted off - anything associated with the Empire was considered bad, the education and security it provided was gone. With no security and medicine life expectancy reduced and life became a struggle for necessities. In this condition, people weren't inclined to spent their energies on technology because the payoff is longer term.
And before the rise of Whabism (sp - the particular sect of radical islam) the Islamic world was a beacon of light. Europe was split, constantly at war and the Middle East and Persia was rich from the silk road and trading in general. At that time mathematics, physics, astronomy and art were highly prized by the Muslim countries. Ghengis Kahn, then the crusades put paid to that, so many resources were put into the war and so much destruction was caused that it took a long time to recover from it. Then along comes el-mental man in the 13th century and suddenly women are property and jihad is on. Sad, really.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
. What do people who have both X and Y chromosomes
They are called men, mostly.
I guess no one mentioned sand and bow-drills as a methodology for producing the sort of holes needed for axle bearings? or that once those same drills were made to produce holes in, say, in a hunk of sand stone, that these holes in sandstone couldn't be used to draw out relatively well tuned axels that would fit the holes made with the same drill?
Either the cave-dudes were seriously short of imagination, or these researchers were, not sure which....maybe both heh
rolling boats on logs?
Otzi the iceman was projected to die at 50 due to arterial clogging if he had not taken the arrow in his shoulder. That's healthy?
And here I thought it was because the Cavewoman wouldn't stop bitching about cleaning the cave, and hunting brontosaurus and such.
*ducks*
Is that they required a wheel to be invented and attached in order to function.
Maybe that also explains why it took so long. Everybody knows you want to get Literacy and Code of Laws first, so that you can get the Republic.
The wheel was available all along, problem was that ROADS had to be made first. In Africa, where I come from, there was no wheel before the arrival of Europeans but they did make sleds from a "Y" branch of a tree, and hauled by cattle. A wheel needs a flat surface to roll along on, without roads they are useless.
In all the talk about wheels, no one seems to have mentioned using them for grinding. Whenever you want to make lots of big bits into little bits, uniformly and with minimal effort, it seems a wheel would be useful -- more so when the effort can be supplied by oxen rather than by your arm.
The wheel was invented in the stone age. Look at the BC comic strip. Everybody rode unicycles.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The Ancient Egyptians had a kind of boomerang too. In fact we all use it, daily, but as the letter "C"!
http://www.numberquest.com/knowledge_letter_meaning_c.php
" The letter C evolved from the Egyptian hieroglyph of sharp hunting stick a sort of boomerang shaped cutting tool."
Cool, ain't it!
No one person invented the wheel. The wheel is just manifest. And we certainly don't have a clear enough vision of antiquity to run around making declarations about who invented it or when.
Wow, that doesn't make sense at all, historically.
I wouldn't be surprised if that is why so many of our earliest leaps of technology came from desert lands like Syria and Egypt,
They did? As I understand it, they came from more fertile areas, like Iran, Turkey, and Iraq.
lots of desert plus nomadic tribes equals less chance to capture slaves and a lot more work to feed the ones you have.
Where do you think the slave trade was 'invented', exactly? Arabia and it's nomads taught the world how to make others do your bidding without their consent.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The Australian Aborigines were perfectly well aware of agriculture as practised widely on the Papua / New Guinea archipelago to the north (itself probably peopled from Australia). They didn't do agriculture (before the European invasion and theft) because they didn't need the food, there being adequate in their environment for their hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Necessity is the mother of invention ; they didn't need it, so they didn't invent it.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"