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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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
"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!
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.
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
No, quite untrue. As any fule kno, the wheel was patented in 2001
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."
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.
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...
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.
In fact, oddly enough, without hermaphrodites, wheels were unlikely to ever be more than toys.
...what?
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?
I hunt. I also live on the edge of the Mark Twain Forest. You cannot pull a cart through the Mark Twain Forest and it ain't laws that stop you, it's trees. And no, those "paths to the forest" weren't and aren't smooth. Ruts. Smooth is totally modern. Not even roads in the US were smooth until after WWII. Read up.
"I am guessing you never hunted. you drive to where you hunt, walk around and kill things, drag them to your cart, load up the bodies and then drive home."
One, that's not hunting for a living, that's recreation. The giveaway is the "drive to" you mentioned.
Now, when Ugh and Arrgh hunted, they walked. They also walked ***all the way home*** instead of back to their car.
"When they could not bring 40 slaves to carry all the dead animals, they needed a cart. plus you did not go on a 1 week hunting trip with just your pointy stick."
Because all primitive hunter/gatherers were slave holders? No. You have no clue as to primitive life. U and A were also in far better shape than you and porting a 150lb carcass wasn't all that much.
it was wheelie hard.
...scoff at the very notion.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
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)
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.
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