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[–] 73 points 1 year ago (18 children)

Why is the first wheel always shown as stone? Surely a log would have lent itself to the discovery of rolling much more readily

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Do you see any trees in that drawing? It seems cavemen existed exclusively in barren volcanic wastelands.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I would guess logs don't lend themselves to the historical/fossil whatever record as well as stone does. The oldest wheels we've found are stone because any potential log ones deteriorated, and this was all before written records.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago

    That entire idea is so absurd I had to check.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel

    Looks like the first transportation-related evidence of wheel we have was made of clay (probably because it was a toy). The first transportation-related actual wheel that we found was made of wood. The first wheel-shaped object we found wasn't used for transportation and was made of wood.

    Stone is just a really bad material for making wheels. But I wrongly expected to see some metal ones on the list.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Wheels were useless anyway until the invention of the axle, around 3500 BCE.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Because the oldest reference disks we have are millstones? Idk. They always look like millstones to me

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Might have been grinding wheels for wheat; don’t have to be replaced as often and if in a stone track don’t have to worry as much about breakage. But that’s just a theory…. A history theory… or at least a history conjecture

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