Is a wheel older than a wall?
score:11
No, wheels are not older than walls.
Walls (as in city walls, designed to protect a group of people) have been discovered at Jericho, and dated to c 8000 BCE. The earliest walls of any kind that we have found so far are at Göbekli Tepe, and these have been dated to the 9th millennium BCE.
The earliest wheel that we have found was discovered in the city of Ur, and was dated c 3100 BCE, although it seems the Ljubljana Marshes Wheel is of approximately the same date, so we can't as yet make any specific attribution about where the wheel was first invented. In any event, the evidence shows that the invention of the wheel occurred much later than the first walls.
Edit - additional information from comments
According to the best evidence currently available, potter's wheels appear to have been developed slightly earlier than wheeled vehicles. And, to be fair to President Trump, it is by no means clear what type of wheel he was referring to. It is interesting that the earliest surviving potters wheels are also made from baked clay [Roger, Peter & Moorey, Stuart: Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries: The Archaeological Evidence, Eisenbrauns, 1999, p146] - which has helped ensure their survival. Had they been made from organic materials, like wood, which are less likely to survive in archaeological contexts, our current understanding might have been very different.
Personally, I would not be at all surprised if future discoveries indicate that the invention of the potter's wheel and the invention of wheeled vehicles were, in fact, broadly contemporaneous. And, of course, their invention would still be nowhere near as old as walls.
Upvote:0
It could be argued the wheel predates the wall but only technically.
The dung beetle wheels their fodder for transport. Any caveman watching a rock rolling down a hill could see a working demonstration of a wheel. The complexity of the wheel was not conceiving of the circle or even the construction. The complexity of the wheel which made it so useful for transport was figuring out how to connect a stable, stationary platform to that moving cylinder. That is what makes the wheel useful and it's what took until 3500 B.C. to first invent. 3900 BC to first use that wheel for transportation. the Wheel found in Mesopotamia in 3500 B.C. was believed to be a potter's wheel.
3500 BC post dates the forming of cities by several thousand years.
The tricky thing about the wheel is not conceiving of a cylinder rolling on its edge. It's figuring out how to connect a stable, stationary platform to that cylinder
More post
- 📝 Why did anti-Chinese riots occur during the Indonesian Reformation of 1998?
- 📝 Can a tablet dated to the reign of king Aha be deciphered?
- 📝 How did the US plan to use nuclear shells for naval guns?
- 📝 Is there a historical explanation as to why the USA people are so litigious compared to the French?
- 📝 Did any Muslim empire/kingdom have its capital in modern Pakistan except Lahore?
- 📝 Was there anything in common between the War of 1812 between Britain and America and the War of 1812 between Napoleon and Russia?
- 📝 War Guilt Methodology: Was Germany solely to blame for WWI?
- 📝 Is there a relationship between Portugal and Spain being able to discover the New World and the Moor occupation?
- 📝 Was Rudolph Hess a moderating influence on Hitler?
- 📝 Ancient Greek term rendered incorrectly as numbers and Latin letters, "01KCDÇ". What is it?
- 📝 What did Germany gain from the Armistice of 11 November 1918?
- 📝 How much did gunpowder cost per barrel in 1605 in London?
- 📝 What was the Soviet reasoning for developing their Airborne Forces (VDV) into a powerful military branch?
- 📝 "Madam" in formal titles
- 📝 Why was Lafayette imprisoned after the French Revolution?
- 📝 When was the last promotion in the British Peerage?
- 📝 What do these lines on the origins of Hindu/Muslim communal consciousness mean?
- 📝 Why did J. Edgar Hoover publicly deny the existence of the Mafia for so long?
- 📝 How stable was the Middle East under Ottoman rule?
- 📝 What were the 52 kinds of victims persecuted by the Nazis?
- 📝 Did the Japanese try to start peace negotiations while in a position of strength in WWII?
- 📝 Did Mesopotamia have coins to represent Gerahs & Minas?
- 📝 Roman armies seem to dislike fighting at night, Livy called it dishonourable. Skulking about. (Ennius, Scaenica, 254-7) Why?
- 📝 When was a decree issued by the Greeks that forbade speaking God's name?
- 📝 What was the real innovation of the coach-builders of Kocs in Hungary?
- 📝 Was Martin Luther King's leadership conference Southern Christian or Southern Baptist?
- 📝 How did people wake up on time before alarm clocks?
- 📝 Was the Reichspropaganda-Leitung (RPL) known to the Germany public?
- 📝 Which battle was the most lopsided result in terms of casualties?
- 📝 How is the "Blitzkrieg" different from the "glubokaya operatsiya"
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Is a wheel older than a wall?
- 📝 Are parts of the Sphinx older than 5000 years?
- 📝 How much smaller were medieval farm animals in England than today?
- 📝 Why are so many metros underground? Isn't that more expensive than an elevated system?
- 📝 Why were so many more Jewish men than Jewish women killed during the Holocaust?
- 📝 Why was the Council of Nicea held in Nicea rather than Rome or Constantinople?
- 📝 What are the factors that caused the new world civilizations to be less technologically advanced than the old world?
- 📝 If the Union Jack joins the flag of England and Scotland, why does it have a different shade of blue than the Scottish flag?
- 📝 Why was World War I ended on Nov 11 11:00, rather than immediately upon signing the armistice?
- 📝 Why do the pyramids show less erosion than the Sphinx?
- 📝 Has there ever been a cold war other than between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.?
- 📝 Why did the Germans use the Enigma machine rather than the far superior "Lorenz" cipher machine?
- 📝 Which countries (or comparable geographical units) have a lower population now than they used to at some point in history before 1950?
- 📝 Why did the Royal Society in 1771 believe that a continent further south than Australia should exist?
- 📝 When was Silver ever more valuable than Gold?
- 📝 How did gold come to symbolize lower ranks than silver in the United States Air Force?
- 📝 Why does Latin America have a higher number of surviving Native Americans than North America?
- 📝 Why, in old movies and TV series, do they always use such extremely exaggerated wheel turns when driving a car?
- 📝 Were the living standards in Medieval Europe a lot worse than in the Muslim world?
- 📝 Did Kim Jong-Il wrest away power (rather than inherit it) from Kim Il-Sung in a power struggle?
- 📝 Is it true that there are more slaves in the world now than ever at one point in history?
- 📝 Why does the Great Wall of China follow such a bendy route?
- 📝 Why was sugar cultivation more profitable in the Caribbean/Brazil than West Africa?
- 📝 Why was Kaliningrad placed under the Russian SFSR rather than the Lithuanian SSR?
- 📝 Who said: "Armies prepare to fight their last war, rather than their next war"?
- 📝 Why was the Roman Empire considered an empire rather than a kingdom (again)?
- 📝 Great Wall of China Controversy
- 📝 How would you accurately use older British currencies when writing a story?
- 📝 What did Germany do after World War II to recover so successfully that it became more prosperous than its WW2 victors?
- 📝 Has there ever been an archbishop or bishop younger than the 16-year-old James of Nicosia?