The wheel

Before wheels, if you wanted to move something enormous and heavy, you would need some logs and a lot of people. You’d place the logs on the ground, slide your object on top of them, and then get your friends to use the logs to roll it along. Or you could drag a sled. Either way, it was slow and exhausting!

People or animals pulled the object across the log rollers on ropes, and others pushed from behind.

The wheel imagine life without wheels: no cars or bikes for a start, and no cogs and gears inside machines, either. With so many wheels around, they might just be the most important invention of them all. Making the world go ROUND AND ROUND It paved the way for...

Gears and coGs are used in machines to multiply force, and were first used in ancient Greece. The last log had to be brought around to the front as the object moved forward.

Wheely useful

Watching log rollers in action, someone, somewhere, had a flash of inspiration: Wheels attached to axles would be so much better! The first wheels we know about were made 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) and Slovenia. They were attached to simple carts pulled by animals, while everyone had a nice rest.

Stone wheels were used for grinding, but are too heavy to move vehicles.

Water wheels were invented in ancient Greece, and were used to irrigate crops and grind corn.

By the way... It was Neolithic (late Stone Age) people like me who first invented the wheel. We also invented farming and developed polished tools made of stone. At first, wheels were solid disks of wood. They worked, but they were very heavy. Around 2,000 bce, someone in western

Siberia came up with the bright idea of using spokes inside the wheels to replace the solid wood.

They were lighter and faster.

Metal hubs used with greased axles made wheels turn even more smoothly.

It takes far less energy to turn the axle than to turn the wheel.

Did you know? The oldest wheels ever discovered are on a stone toy. It dates from 5500 bce and was found in Turkey.

H ow it changed the world Wheels allowed people to travel and trade much more easily than ever before, and a few thousand years later, wheels were moving faster and farther than ever thanks to the engine. Wheels are also the driving force behind countless useful machines.

The Americas

The wheel wasn’t big in the Americas—the only ones found there are on children’s toys. This is probably because there were no animals strong enough to pull carts, like oxen or horses. The people there had to wait until these animals, and the wheel, were introduced to them in the 16th century. Until then, the most useful animal they had was the llama.

Spinning wheelS, used to turn plant material or wool into thread, are probably an

indian invention, from around the 11th century. wheelS really began to motor from the 1700s, at first under steam power and later using