Origin Of Wheel

Usually, the wheel is regarded as the oldest and most important invention of mankind, so that we often compare it with the use of fire. In fact, humans have tamed fire for more than 1.5 million years, and it took only 6000 years to start using wheels.

Before mastering sharp and strong tools, it was impossible for humans to have wheeled vehicles. It is difficult to make wood into a proper cylinder with stone tools, let alone a wheel with spokes. Therefore, the appearance of the wheel can only be after the bronze age.

Robert Rowe, a famous American anthropologist, once asserted that all the nations that use wheeled vehicles have learned from Babylon, Cuba, directly or indirectly. American Indians know that tugging boats on rolling logs, spinning wheels, and rolling iron rings are also used, but the meaning of driving by wheels has never occurred to them.

Lu Wei's view on the origin of the wheel is also the view of most archaeologists, but new archaeological discoveries often subvert old theories. The ruts under the flintbek stone tomb in Germany were left between 4800 and 4700 BC. The jar with a cart shaped pattern found in bronocice, Poland, is located before 4725 BC, but the seven carbon-14 dating of this stratum is inclined to the conclusion of 4610-4440 BC. The earliest evidence of wheeled transport in the Near East was found by American archaeologist baldia at the late Uruk site in Syria. There, a model with wheels and a mural of a "truck" were unearthed. These things were left by our ancestors 6400-6500 years ago.

Therefore, wheeled vehicles may have appeared in Europe and the United States, and then spread to the Near East, or were invented again by Oriental people.