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Why was the wheel invented so late

08.03.2012

The wheel, this is the greatest invention of mankind after the fire, has been waiting for a long time "in the wings". It came into use around 3500 BC. The Bronze Age was in the yard, people learned how to create metal alloys, they knew how to dig channels, built sailing ships, invented complex musical instruments such as the harp, and the wheel was still unknown. David Anthony, an anthropologist at Hartwick College, USA, who has devoted himself to studying the history of the wheel, believes that the reason for this is technical complexity, which was not at all easy to overcome.

In order for the fixed axle structure with rotating wheels to function, the ends of the axle must be carefully machined to reduce friction, so that its surface at the points of contact with the wheel is as smooth as possible, and the cross-sectional shape approximates as closely as possible to a perfect circle. The axle should fit tightly into the wheel hub, but so that the wheel still turns freely. There were also problems with the axle thickness. It increased the friction inside the bushing, and the thin one was fragile and quickly broke. According to Anthony, people of the Bronze Age solved this problem by shortening the axle as much as possible, this increased its strength with a relatively small diameter. Therefore, the world's first carts were very narrow. However, in general, the sensitivity of the "wheel-axle" system did not allow it to be developed gradually, in steps, it was an "all-or-nothing" structure.

Whoever invented the wheel must have had access to broad planks of trees with broad trunks to bend them into rims; he needed tools to cut holes in wheels and machine axles; in addition, he must have had the need to transport heavy loads over the land. “Probably,” says Anthony, “the main obstacle to the invention of the wheel was the insufficient development of carpentry skills. And the first copper chisels and chisels first appeared in the world in the Middle East after 4000 BC.”

The wheel is such a thing that can be invented only once and only in one place, because an invention of this kind, having appeared once, will spread rapidly and will quickly reach all corners of the Earth. Therefore, historians still find it difficult to say exactly where it happened. They call Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), because the necessary copper tools first appeared there, but the first images of the wheel appeared in Eurasia, in the region of Poland or places close to it. Asko Parpola, a Finnish Indologist at the University of Helsinki, believes for linguistic reasons that the wheel was invented by the Trypillians, a primitive people who lived on the territory of modern Ukraine - the words "wheel" and "cart", according to him, have roots coming from the language of Trypillian culture .

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