When studying history, you don’t want to reinvent the wheel. But what about when you are studying the history of the invention of the wheel itself? Well, when that is the case, it might be smart to think a little outside the box.

That is exactly what researchers did when working on a paper that they have since published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

In the paper, they used computer simulations to try to figure out exactly how ancient humans invented the wheel. It is known that it is improbable that they went from simply dragging objects along the ground to using wheels with axles in transportation, so figuring out how that advancement took place is very interesting.

The team consisted of two engineers and a historian. They propose that long before the wheel, humans were using bilateral rollers to move heavy objects. These are long cylinders, such as straight tree trunks, which are placed on the ground with a heavy object on top. Pushing the object over these cylinders would allow them to turn, dramatically reducing the friction and difficulty of moving the objects.

The downside to this method is that you have to have a lot of the bilateral rollers, and you have to have people consistently moving them from the back of the object to the front, making long-distance transportation tedious.

In addition, in places like mines, it would be very difficult to be able to move these objects around due to the tight confines.

The researchers propose that ancient miners eventually developed what is known as a grooved unilateral roller. This is where the rollers are placed into a groove on the cart or other object, so that as it turns, the roller moves along with it so far fewer of the rollers are needed.

There would still be significant friction on the rollers, but it would be less than just dragging the cart along on the ground. This design would also be very useful in the tight confines of a mine.

From there, the researchers propose, the ancient engineers would realize that if they carved away the area in the center of the cart, the rollers could go right over obstacles in the middle, making it so a path only needed to be cleared on each side of the cart, similar to how modern trains work today.

Finally, the need to go around corners would prompt these people to move the friction from directly on the cart to an axel setup. This allowed each wheel on the cart to move independently, which is much more effective for going around curves, which are common in mining environments.

Of course, throughout this type of advancement, ancient humans would also learn that using various types of natural lubrication would make it easier to push the carts and allow the carts to last much longer.

The computer simulations in the study backed up this type of progressive development of the wheel.

While it is impossible to know for certain, researchers believe that this adaptation first took place in the Carpathian Mountains where copper was being mined. Four-wheeled wagons have been found here and dated as far back as 3600 BCE.

Without a time machine, it is impossible to know exactly how, when, or where the wheel developed, but this study presents a compelling argument that shows it was almost certainly developed incrementally over time.

This shouldn’t be surprising given that this was one of the most advanced and important technologies of the day.

Who knew inventing the wheel was so complicated?

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