Inventions
The Wheel
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The wheel is a circular device that rotates on an axle, among the most consequential mechanical inventions in human history. Beyond wheeled transport, the same principle underlies the potter wheel, the waterwheel, the windmill and the gearing that drives most subsequent machinery. Its earliest archaeological evidence comes from Mesopotamia, first as a potter wheel and shortly after as a wheeled cart, though it cannot be credited to one people or one place.
Facts
Disputed
YearThe wheel invention cannot be fixed to a single moment, people or place. The earliest archaeological evidence, a potter wheel from Mesopotamia, dates to roughly 3500 BCE, with wheeled vehicles appearing shortly after. Similar devices appear to have arisen independently in parts of Europe and Central Asia within a few centuries, so historians of technology treat the wheel as a case of roughly simultaneous, independent invention rather than a single point of origin. SignificanceThe wheel underlies wheeled transport, the potter wheel, the waterwheel and windmill, and the gearing that drives nearly every mechanism invented after it. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Wrought Iron, Materials Celtic chariots added an iron rim around the wheel in the first millennium BCE, roughly two and a half millennia after the earliest wooden wheels.
In Field
Sources
1. A History of Technology
Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors, Oxford University Press, 1954
Wheel (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationLead sectionQuote, Lead section
A wheel is a rotating component (typically circular in shape) intended to turn on an axle bearing.
Wheel (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Wrought Iron, Materials sectionQuote, Associated With: Wrought Iron, Materials section
Celtic chariots introduced an iron rim around the wheel in the 1st millennium BCE.
Open Questions (1 open question)
Who Invented the Wheel
The wheel's earliest archaeological evidence is a potter's wheel and shortly after a wheeled cart from Mesopotamia, roughly 3500 BCE, but similar wheeled vehicles appear in the archaeological record across Central Europe and the Caucasus within a few centuries of each other, and no single inventor or point of origin can be credited from the evidence that survives.
What would resolve this Additional securely dated archaeological finds that establish a clear chronological and geographic priority among the early Mesopotamian, Central European and Caucasus wheeled-vehicle finds; none exists today.
Archaeology
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