The wheel, as is known, was a huge technical achievement for human civilization, but it is not known who, where or when it was invented. It is certain that the revolutionary idea was born sometime before 6000 thousand years ago, because around 3000 BC its use was widespread throughout the world.
There are three theories about where the invention was born. According to one of them, the Sumerians were the first to discover the pleasure of rolling in the northern part of present-day Turkey, on the shores of the Black Sea, and according to the other, in Mesopotamia. The oldest known wheel with its axle was found in a Slovenian swamp in 2002 and is 5,200 years old.
The third theory was published in 2016 by Richard Bullitt, a professor at Columbia University in America. According to Pollitt, the wheel was first used in copper mines in the Carpathians. Models of clay chariots from the Copper Age caught the attention of the specialist. These were large, sloping-walled boxes with four small wheels at the bottom, and they practically looked like the pedestals still in use today. The driving force behind the story is that copper was in great demand in this era, but as its deposits became depleted, it had to go deeper and deeper to find it, which over time forced technical solutions to facilitate the work.
This was the type of cart that could be easily turned over to aid in the movement of materials in tight spaces. In an article published on October 23 in the Journal of the English Royal Society of Natural Sciences, American researchers used computer mechanistic models to reconstruct the possible scenario of evolution leading to the wheel.
Copper was gold
First there was the heavy basket filled with stones, then came the innovations. The load was first pushed onto the rollers placed below, and then the roller that had been rolled from behind was placed back under the box at the front. However, it was difficult to pack into a tight space. In the next step, a groove was cut at both ends of the wooden cylinders used as pulleys, so that a frame held them in place, so that they could be pushed continuously, as they remained under the box.
The pulleys were then advanced to the axles on which the wheels were mounted on either side. This was useful because the raised cart was no longer disturbed by small stones in its path. Another innovation came about half a millennium later, when wheels could rotate independently of the axle, making maneuvering a vehicle much easier.
The environment in which the inventors of the wheel moved supported cylinder-based movement because of its properties. In essence, it was the environment itself – narrow, enclosed corridors – that led the inventors to this construction.
– pointed out one of the authors of the research Kay James.
Everything was in motion
Six thousand years ago, there were no Hungarians living in the region, but without the wheel, the Age of Migration could not have come, when migration redrew the ethnic composition of previous eras.
The wheel theory invented in the Carpathians is not the final solution to the historical mystery. According to James, different cultures could easily have invented their own wheel independently of each other.
Moreover, even if we view it as a single, well-defined and closed event, the development of the wheel continues, as does its absence. For example, Mesoamerican civilizations made children's toys with wheels, but they never took the wheel seriously and never used it. Modern people carried their suitcases in their hands until the 1970s, and since the 1980s wheeled suitcases have become popular. There are also modern roller bearings, invented by Parisian bicycle mechanic Jules Sureray in August 1869. A few months later, the first road bicycle race in history was held, and this race became the foundation of the automobile revolution.
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