No one invented the wheel

After all who invented the wheel? Computational simulations unveil the unlikely way a technology was born that changed the world almost 6,000 years ago – and allow you to conclude that the wheel was not invented: it was born.

Imagine you are a copper miner in southeastern Europe in the year 3900 BC: day after day, transports copper ore through the suffocating tunnels of the mine, and resigned to the strenuous monotony of your life.

So, in a beautiful afternoon, you see a co -worker do something remarkable.

Common strange -looking millyour colleague carries casually the equivalent of Three times your body weight In a single trip.

While your colleague returns to the mine to seek another load, it suddenly realizes that your profession is about to become Much less tiring and much more profitable.

What does not immediately realize is that it is witnessing something that will end Change the course of history – Not just for your small mining community, but for all humanity, explains Kai JamesProfessor of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, in an article no.

Despite immeasurable impact of the wheelno one has so far been able to know for sure Who invented it, or when and where it was conceived for the first time.

The hypothetical scenario described above is based on one that suggests that miners in the hills of Carpatos-in present-day Hungary-almost 6,000 years ago as a means of transporting copper ore.

The theory was at the time supported by Discovery of over 150 wagons miniature by archaeologists working in the region.

These four -wheel models in small size were made of clayand their outer surfaces were recorded with a reminiscent wicker pattern of baskets used by mining communities of the time.

Carbon dating later revealed that these wagons are the oldest known representations of wheeled transportation to date.

This theory also raises an issue of particular interest for Kai James, an aerospace engineer who studies the Engineering Design Science.

How an obscure and scientifically naive mining society discovered the wheel when highly advanced civilizations, such as the ancient Egyptiansdidn’t they do it?

A controversial idea

For a long time, it was assumed that the wheel would have evolved from simple wooden trunks placed in front of a particular “car”. But until recently, no one could explain how or why this transformation occurred.

In addition, from the 1960s, some researchers began to express strong doubts about the theory of trunk evolution to the wheel.

After all, so that the trunks, or “rolls” of wood, could be useful, it was necessary to have a flat and firm land and free path slopes and sharp curves.

Also, since the car goes over them, it was necessary that the used rollers were continuously brought to the front of the carto keep the load moving.

For all these reasons, The ancient world used rollers in moderation. According to skeptics, The rollers were too rare and too impracticable to have been the starting point for the evolution of the wheel.

But A mine – with their passages closed and made by man – It would have provided favorable conditions for the rolls. This factor, among others, led Kai James’s team to revisit the hypothesis of the rollers.

A turning point

The transition from rolls to wheels requires two key innovations.

The first is a car modification that carries the load: the base of the car must be equipped with semicircularthat allow the rollers to enclose and keep them in their place. This way, as the operator pulls the car, the rollers are pulled along with it.

This innovation may have been motivated by confined nature of the environment of the mine, where to have to periodically transport rollers used back to the front of the car would have been especially onerous.

The discovery of outstanding rollers represented a turning point in the evolution of the wheel and paved the way for the second and most important innovation.

This next step involved a change in the rollers. To understand how and why this change occurred, the investigators team resorted to computer physics and engineering.

Simulate the evolution of the wheel

To start the investigation, the researchers created a computer program designed to simulate the evolution of a roll to a wheelfollowing the hypothesis that this transformation was driven by a phenomenon called “mechanical advantage“.

This is the principle that allows pliers amplify the grip force of a user, providing additional leverage. Similarly, modify the shape of the roll to generate mechanical advantage would amplify the push force From the user, making it easier to advance the car.

Or algorithm Modeled hundreds of potential forms of rollers and evaluated how each one behaved, both in terms of mechanical and structural resistance – used to determine If a certain roll would break under the weight of the load.

As expected, the algorithm finally converged on the family way and axis, which determined to be the ideal. During the execution of the algorithm, each new design performed slightly better than its predecessor.

Researchers believe that a similar evolutionary process occurred with the miners 6,000 years ago, but It is unclear what led the miners to explore alternative forms of rollers.

A possibility is that the friction in the roll-inix interface caused the wear of the surrounding wood, leading to a slight narrowing of the roll at the point of contact. Another theory is that the miners started to tune the rollers so that your cars could undergo small obstructions on the ground.

Anyway, thanks to the mechanical advantagethis narrowing of the axis region It made the cars easier to push. Over time, better performance designs were repeatedly favored compared to others, and new rollers were manufactured to imitate these best performances.

Consequently, the rollers have been becoming more and more narrowuntil Everything that was left will have been a thin bar with large discs at both ends. This rudimentary structure marks the birth of what we now call “wheel“.

According to Kai James’s theory, There was no precise moment where the wheel was invented. Instead, as well as the evolution of species, the wheel gradually emerged from an accumulation of small improvementsie the wheel It was not invented – it was born.