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| A wheeled figurine from the New World, probably made in Veracruz between 100 B.C. and 800 A.D. (Picture from: |
Wheel is an important discovery that revolutionized human civilization. Even though it looks primitive, People can find this tool around 5,500 years ago when man had made sailboats and mixed metals.
The fact that the man took a long time to find a wheel to be a mystery for anthropologists. If the farm has been growing since the 12-10 thousand years ago, why the wheel was soon found to help move the crop?
Anthropologists from Hartwick College, New York, and author of The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, David Anthony, said the man took the time to understand and build a stable wheel concept. Wheels are not just moving round logs using a hand, but it requires a strong foundation for connecting the cylinder. This concept encourages people found the wheels and axles. "Makes it very difficult," he said.
Building a strong axis connecting the wheels are spinning requires specialized knowledge and techniques. The structure of the wheels must be round-shaped piece of wood with the tip that fits with the size of the hole in the center of the wheel cylinder. There are two possibilities when creating the connecting axis.
- First, as is made smaller to reduce friction on the spinning wheel. However, this design makes the stem is too fragile and unable to withstand heavy loads.
- Second, as the large size made to carry heavy loads. Unfortunately, this design makes it difficult spinning wheels because friction is too great.
Humans have to change the shape of a cart to be very narrow so that small axis remains able to sustain heavy load on it. "Carpentry skills are delayed invention of the wheel up to 5.500 years ago," he said. Therefore, a new bronze tools discovered 6,000 years ago in the Near East.
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| Wood wagon wheels. (Picture from: http://www.oxbowwagonsandcoaches.com/) |
The invention of the wheel was so challenging that it probably happened
only once, in one place. However, from that place, it seems to have
spread so rapidly across Eurasia and the Middle East
that experts cannot say for sure where it originated. The earliest
images of wheeled carts have been excavated in Poland and elsewhere in
the Eurasian steppes, and this region is overtaking Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) as the wheel’s most likely birthplace. According to Asko Parpola, an Indologist at the University of Helsinki
in Finland, there are linguistic reasons to believe the wheel
originated with the Tripolye people of modern-day Ukraine. That is, the
words associated with wheels and wagons derive from the language of that
culture.
Parpola thinks miniature models of wheeled wagons,
which are commonly found in the Eurasian steppes, likely predated
human-scale wagons. “It is … striking that so many models were made in
the Tripolye culture.
Such models are often thought to have been children’s toys, but it
seems more likely to me that they were miniature counterparts of real
things,” he said. “The primacy of the miniature models is suggested by
the fact that wheeled images of animals even come from native Indian
cultures of Central America, where real wheels were never made.”*** [SCIENTIFICAMERICAN | ANTON WILLIAM | KORAN TEMPO 3857]
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