Historical background of wheels
The reason why the wheel is a relatively late invention is inseparable from the natural environment in which our ancestors lived. Ten thousand years ago, most of the land was covered by glaciers. If there was anything that could be called a "means of transportation" at that time, it would be a sledge. In the jungle and desert, wheels have no practical value - even if they have appeared, they have been eliminated by sheep intestines under the cover of dense forests and rolling quicksand. The Aztecs in Central America did not use wheeled vehicles. Interestingly, they made a large number of animal clay sculptures with four wheels.
Another example is Eskimo. They live in the ice and snow. Not only do they have no suitable roads, but they also lack wood. It is obvious that wheels can no longer appear in this environment.
In other regions, wheels did not first appear as vehicles. The cart shaped pottery cups unearthed from a Hungarian tomb in 2900 BC and cultural relics from other parts of the world show that wheeled vehicles were first used only in ceremonies and ceremonial occasions.
Even with vehicles, it is useless without proper animal power. The lack of horses to drive vehicles was also one of the factors restricting the Aztecs from inventing wheels. As far back as 15000 BC, hunters in the stone age put bridles on horses. At that time, humans had just domesticated horses.
According to Joseph Needham, a British historian of science, the first car appeared in China about 4500 to 3500 years ago. It is mentioned in Zuo Zhuan that the car was invented by Xi Zhong in the early Xia Dynasty. If the record is true, it was four thousand years ago. In the cultural relics of the Yin Dynasty (more than 3000 years ago), archaeologists also found a car for burial. At that time, the car was composed of a carriage, a shaft and two wheels. It was already a relatively mature means of transportation.
In ancient China, it is said that the Yellow Emperor Xuanyuan inserted wood in the center of the round wheel to make it run, thus creating a vehicle. However, given that there are so many inventions attributed to the Yellow Emperor, we can not easily take this statement seriously.
