Round and Round with the Wheel

Chapter 2:

 

As I was moving around through some old memories, a thought kept jumping in my mind...…."How did a Wheel come into Existence?"

A simple thought, yet the answer to which generates interest in every human who has encountered a wheel.

The wheel, as historian says, was invented roughly in 3500 BC. As Humans evolved in the Palaeolithic era, they discovered that heavy, round objects could more easily be moved by rolling them than bulky, irregular ones. The realisation was made that some heavy objects could be transported if a round object such as a fallen tree was placed underneath and the heavy object rolled over it. However, diagrams on ancient clay tables suggest the wheel did not materialise for thousands of years until a potter’s wheel was used in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) in 3500 BC.

The oldest wooden wheel discovered so far was found in Ljubljana, Slovenia and is believed to date back to about 3200 BC. It was about the same time that the wheel was first used for transportation on chariots. With a need for greater speed and manoeuvrability, the Egyptians created the spoked wheel around 2000 BC, while Celtic chariots a millennium later employed iron rims for greater strength. However, the wheel remained largely unimproved until the 19th Century when Robert William Thompson invented the pneumatic tyre, a rubber wheel using compressed air which paved the way for automobile and bicycle tyres.

The idea of the wheel may have been influenced by Nature, as many inventions are. The closest evidence to a wheel in nature is the home of a Dung Beetle. Dung Beetle lay their eggs in dung and transport it by rolling it into a ball. Another wheel found in nature is the tumbleweed.