Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Why Wasn’t the Wheel Invented Sooner? (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. If you were to ask most people what the very first invention that humans came up with is, many of them might say, the wheel. And it's not a bad guess. But believe it or not, the wheel was nowhere close to being the first invention. In fact, as far as we know, there were a whole bunch of things that were invented before the wheel, and in fact probably had to have been invented before the wheel could be discovered. Learn more about why the wheel wasn't invented sooner on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow?

Starting point is 00:00:51 Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment. rest, and millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be

Starting point is 00:01:25 exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. The wheel is such a simple, fundamental invention. It seems like it's something that would have been around since before the rise of civilization. In fact, you might have seen a cartoon at some point that had a caveman wearing an animal skin, who is sitting in a cave chiseling a wheel made out of stone. Not only is such a scene absolutely absurd, but hopefully by the time you're done with this episode, you'll understand why such a thing couldn't have possibly happened.

Starting point is 00:02:00 To be sure, the wheel is a very ancient invention, but it doesn't predate recorded history, civilization, or agriculture. Before we get into the weeds, let's start with a definition of a wheel. A wheel isn't just something that is a circle. Humans did figure out the circle really early on, but there was more to it than that. A wheel is simply a circular object that is intended to rotate on an axle. Obviously, we have no idea who invented the wheel.

Starting point is 00:02:27 The earliest wheels which appear in the archaeological record show up around the year 4,000 to 3,500 BC in Samaria and Mesopotamia. That doesn't date the wheel to the Stone Age or the Paleolithic, but rather to the Bronze Age. This dating of the invention of the wheel means that the technical history of humanity unfolded in a way that most people don't realize. The wheel came after humans had already been building megalithic structures for millennia. It came after the development of agriculture and irrigation, and it came after humans established cities with populations over 10,000 people. More importantly, the wheel came after humans had developed the ability to do elaborate metalworking with bronze. The other thing that will surprise most people is that the first wheels, as far as we can tell with the evidence we've discovered,

Starting point is 00:03:13 weren't used for transportation. The first wheel was actually used for pottery. This actually makes sense if you think about it. Pottery was ubiquitous, pretty much everywhere in the known world, and the first pottery dates back almost 24,000 years. The development of the pottery wheel was just a technical innovation to more efficiently create and improve the quality of pottery. I'll probably do a future episode on pottery

Starting point is 00:03:36 just because so much of what we know about the ancient world all comes through the lens of discarded pottery. A pottery wheel only required a single wheel, not a pair of wheels like you might find in a cart, so it was conceptually simpler. Plus, the wheel didn't need to bear a great weight. The first evidence of wheels for transportation or movement goes to about the same period of time. However, the first evidence of it doesn't come from Mesopotamia, but rather from the North Caucasus, Eastern Europe, or Central Asia. And before I go any further, I have to put a big verbal asterisk on this. The evidence for this

Starting point is 00:04:08 isn't cut and dry. The wheel could very well have come from Mesopotamia. There's a fair amount of secondhand evidence for wheels, which implies that there might have been wheeled vehicles earlier. And to be honest, things always tend to be dated earlier and earlier as we find more things, so it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case with wheeled vehicles as well. There are ancient images that look like they could be of wheeled vehicles, plus there are ruins of buildings that had entrances wide enough for carts. Either way, even if the wheel dates back even older than 4,000 BC, there are several things about his creation where there is a considerable amount of consensus. There were several

Starting point is 00:04:44 Preconditions it were probably necessary for the wheel to be invented. For starters, the first wheels were probably made out of wood. That meant you need a source of timber and large trees. Second, and probably most importantly, you needed metal tools to saw a cross-section of the logs and chisel the shape to the wheels. Moreover, you probably needed domestic draft animals, which is why most people think that the wheel was probably developed somewhere in the vicinity of the Eurasian step. The Eurasian step is where horses were first domesticated, and where the need to develop the wheel would have been the greatest, but more on that in a bit. So far, I've just been talking about the wheel as if a circular cross-section of a log was the invention, but it really wasn't.

Starting point is 00:05:24 The key to the development of the wheel for use in transportation was the axle. The axle is what makes a wheel useful. Without it, you have a glorified serving platter or a really bad frisbee, and understanding why it can help you give a glimpse into why the wheel wasn't developed 10,000 years earlier. A wheel needs to rotate about the axle. The whole, in the middle of the wheel has to be a really good fit. It can't be too tight, otherwise there's too much friction and the wheel won't turn. If it's too loose, the wheel will wobble and it won't be stable. The ends of the axle and the wheel holes have to be perfectly smooth to reduce friction as well. Moreover, an axle can't be too thin, or else it couldn't bear

Starting point is 00:06:01 heavy loads, and it also can't be too thick, else you have friction problems. So the development of the wheel is really the development of the wheel and the axle. Just thinking of a circular piece of wood is an oversimplification of the problem. The current thinking is that the wheel and axle were probably only invented once, and then spread across Asia, Europe, and Africa. Indeed, because it was a transportation technology, it was something that could spread rapidly. We know that wheeled carts were probably in use in China around the year 2000 BC, and were in the British Isles around 1,000 BC. Slowly over time, there were innovations that were made to the wheel, primarily the development of spokes, which occurred sometime around 2000 to 1500 BC.

Starting point is 00:06:41 The first evidence of spokes were found in the Shintasha culture in the central Ural Mountains. Spokes allowed for lighter wheels that could travel faster. The other big innovation was putting an iron rim around the outside of the wheel, which was developed by the Celtic people around the year 1000 BC. Wheel and Axel technology spread pretty much everywhere in Europe, Asia, and northern and eastern Africa. However, famously, the wheel was never used in the Americas. Despite all of the large and advanced civilizations which arose in North and South America, None of them ever used the wheel for transportation or even pottery.

Starting point is 00:07:15 As far as we know, they didn't even use a wheelbarrow. The question for centuries has been, why? Civilizations in the Americas had advanced metalworking and had independently discovered bronze. They clearly had the ability to do advanced engineering, building enormous edifices like Magu Picchu in Peru, to Kaling Guatemala, and Teatihuacan in Mexico. In all of these construction projects, they almost certainly used logs as rollers to move large stones. Also, many of these civilizations had a very advanced system of roads which showed evidence

Starting point is 00:07:46 of advanced engineering. The really puzzling thing is that wheels were found in Central America, in children's toys. There have been many small clay toys found in archaeological digs that had wheels. They looked like an animal, but with an axle going through their feet and wheels on the ends of the axles. So if the early Americans had the technology to make wheels, had the construction ability to make roads, and clearly understood the concept of the wheel found in children's toys, why didn't they take the next step to actually use the wheel?

Starting point is 00:08:16 The reason most people think that wheels weren't used in the Americas has to do with the lack of draft animals. The old world had horses and oxen, the new world didn't. Draft animals explained why most archaeologists think that the wheel was probably invented somewhere in the Eurasian step, because that's where horses were domesticated. Before you had carts, you had sledges, which is like a cart with runners that you drag. And if you had a sledge, the idea of of a cart with axles and wheels would probably seem much clearer. Just as pottery was responsible for the development of the pottery wheel, so two were draft animals responsible for the creation of the wheel and axle system. I mentioned before that wheeled vehicles had spread to Africa,

Starting point is 00:08:56 but I only mentioned the northern parts of Africa. Carts and chariots were quite common in Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan, parts of the say hell and West Africa, but they never caught on in the south. Why? There was clearly trade and cultural communication amongst tribes and civil civilizations in Africa. So why were the wheels only found in the north? Again, it probably has to do with draft animals. In the case of southern Africa, it has to do with the TTI fly, which made it very difficult for horses to thrive. There is evidence of horses, donkeys, and even camels further south in Africa, but it never had the cultural impact that it did further north. Also, the soil, as you went further south, was conducted for a different type of agriculture. Bush-fallow rotation was popular where you

Starting point is 00:09:39 could burn and clear a plot of land, plant crops, and then let it grow wild again and just repeat the cycle. That type of agriculture didn't require the use of plows, which meant that draft animals weren't as necessary. You might be wondering that in the Andes Mountains, they had llamas that were domesticated. Weren't those in the Americas? Lomas are pack animals, not draft animals. They could be loaded with packs, and they were primarily designed for traversing mountains, not for pulling plows or carts. So, the wheel wasn't just a simple invention that was made by a caveman. It was an invention, along with the axle, that required several other inventions to come first before it could be created.

Starting point is 00:10:19 Moreover, it was draft animals that created the necessity which led to the development of the wheel. Without domestic draft animals and advanced metalworking, we probably wouldn't have wheels on our cars today. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Why Wasn’t the Wheel Invented Sooner? (Encore)

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