Spoked wheel
Rueda con radios
- Date
- c. 2000 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Sintashta, Chelyabinsk, southern Urals, Russia
- Credited to
- Sintashta-Petrovka culture
- Field
- Movement
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A light wheel with a curved rim and wooden spokes, instead of the solid disc, reducing weight to a fraction and enabling fast vehicles. It appears in the chariot burials of Sintashta around 2000 BCE.
The Sintashta wheels are known from imprints in burials; some researchers place the origin in Anatolia or Mesopotamia at similar dates (c. 2000-1900 BCE).
What it led to
- The light, horse-drawn war chariot, the decisive weapon of the 2nd millennium
- Rapid spread through Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and China of an elite military technology
- 'Maryannu' warrior aristocracies that dominated the states of the Late Bronze Age
- Faster wheels on civilian vehicles and roads adapted to them
Built on
- Horse domesticationc. 3500 BCE (discutido)
- Wheel and wheeled vehiclec. 3500 BCE
- Ljubljana Marshes wheel and axlec. 3350-3100 BCE
- Solid-disc wheel
- Bronze carpentry tools
- Steam bending of wood
Made possible
- War chariotc. 1900 BCE
- Chariots of Yinxu (Shang dynasty)c. 1200 BCE
- Wheelbarrowc. 100 CE
- Hittite three-man chariot
- Travelling carriage