Wheel and wheeled vehicle
Rueda y carro
- Date
- c. 3500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Bronocice, Lesser Poland, Poland; Flintbek, Germany; Uruk, Iraq
- Credited to
- Funnelbeaker (TRB), Maikop and Uruk cultures (nearly simultaneous)
- Field
- Movement
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A solid wooden wheel mounted on an axle beneath an ox-drawn cart, documented by the Bronocice pot, the Flintbek ruts, the Uruk pictogram and the Ljubljana wheel (c. 3150 BCE). The first rotary transport machine.
It appears almost simultaneously (3500–3300 BCE) in central Europe, the northern Caucasus (Maikop), the Pontic steppe and Mesopotamia; a single origin (the Carpathians or Mesopotamia) is debated against multiple invention. In the Americas the wheel was known only in toys.
What it led to
- Land transport of grain, dung and materials: extensive agriculture and trade
- Mobility of steppe pastoralists (Yamnaya) and the spread of Indo-European languages
- The war cart and, with the spoked wheel, chariot cavalry
- The axle-and-bearing principle applied to the potter's wheel and the pulley
Built on
Made possible
- Ljubljana Marshes wheel and axlec. 3350-3100 BCE
- Fast potter's wheelc. 3100 BCE
- Spoked wheelc. 2000 BCE
- War chariotc. 1900 BCE
- Spoked wheel
- Fast potter's wheel
- Pulley and waterwheel