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.'"

Comments

Environment

[MichaelSmith]

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?

Re:Environment

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who invented wheels were not using them for wagons, but originally as pottery wheels. Wheels for wagons came a little later, and further north, in Central Asia, where the wide flat grasslands made it easier to use wheeled wagons (at least in summer), and the availability of large trees made the wood needed more accessible.

What do you mean by 'wheel'

[arisvega]

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

Re:What do you mean by 'wheel'

[tsa]

You need a lot more than a prototype of a steam engine for an industrial revolution. For starters you need a reliable way to make huge quantities of iron. For this you need enormous amounts of iron ore and coal (or another fuel). For these you need mines and the knowledge and technology to mine them. Furthermore you need other metals, wood, paint, and a whole lot of other chemicals and things, all readily available in huge quantities. If one of them misses you have a big problem. England is probably the only place in the world where all of these things were available in large quantities very close to each other.

Re:Why create the wheel?

[andymadigan]

Why the heck would the agricultural revolution be a mystery? The Levant had the first known sedentary culture (born of a land of "milk and honey" - seriously, there was so much food available in the immediate area that they didn't need to migrate constantly). Then, the climate changed, and the Levant starting moving towards the much more desert-like area it is today. Naturally, people who had been living a sedentary lifestyle for generations would try to preserve that and so it seems inevitable that at least a few of them would come up with a solution.

If you think I'm making this up (or pulling it from the bible) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natufian_culture .

Actually, I personally believe that some form of this eventually became the "Garden of Eden" story.

Re:Why create the wheel?

[RichPowers]

Jared Diamond wrote a famous article to that effect: "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race."

"One straight forward example of what paleopathologists have learned from skeletons concerns historical changes in height. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunger-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5' 9'' for men, 5' 5'' for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 B. C. had reached a low of only 5' 3'' for men, 5' for women. By classical times heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant ancestors. "

"Compared to the hunter-gatherers who preceded them, the [Native American] farmers had a nearly 50 per cent increase in enamel defects indicative of malnutrition, a fourfold increase in iron-deficiency anemia (evidenced by a bone condition called porotic hyperostosis), a threefold rise in bone lesions reflecting infectious disease in general, and an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, probably reflecting a lot of hard physical labor."