The Wheel

3,400 B.C.

According to the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, the first evidence for the development of wheels dates to about 3,400 B.C. near the Black Sea, and, independently, within a few centuries in pre-historic Mexico. The first wheels in Eurasia were solid woods circles made from three planks fastened together, whereas the Mexican wheels were made from a single piece of wood. According to Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, the wheels developed by ancient Mexicans were only ever used as parts for toys, because there were no large domestic animals that Mexicans could hitch to carts. The only animals in the Americas that would have served that purpose, he says, were llamas, but they were in the central Andes, and the invention of the wheel did not make its way there during pre-Columbian times. The wheel spread throughout much of Eurasia within a few centuries, as part of wheelbarrows, rolling animal-drawn carts, and animal-driven grindstones. Ideas were traded between different groups of people, leading to new innovations and new technologies, such as waterwheels, tidal mills, and windmills.

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