Why the Wheel Was Late

Description:
The wheel is younger than the city. People were smelting copper, raising temples
and cutting precise joinery in oak for centuries before anyone put a wheel on an
axle. This film asks why — and follows the answer from a bog in Slovenia to one
and a half billion cars.

Everything said here is checked against university-press books, peer-reviewed
journals and primary documents. Where historians disagree, the film says so.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Why did the wheel arrive so late?
1:18 Title
1:25 Part one. Why the wheel was late
3:47 Part two. How it was made
5:50 Part three. Who invented it
9:15 Part four. What the wheel did
11:49 Part five. Into lightness
15:08 Part six. The limit
19:50 Part seven. Steam
23:11 Part eight. The heart
28:03 Part nine. Three engines
30:47 Part ten. The line and the price
34:12 Part eleven. The street
36:21 Part twelve. How the car was forced to be safe
38:39 Part thirteen. Oil
40:40 Part fourteen. The ring

SOURCES FOR THE CLAIMS

The calculation the first wagon-wright had to hold in his head — David Anthony,
"The Horse, the Wheel, and Language", Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 65

"We cannot even say where the wheel-and-axle principle was invented" —
Anthony 2007, pp. 73-74

A single centre of origin is no longer tenable — Mária Bondár, Acta Archaeologica
Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 69(2), 2018, pp. 279, 282

Present dating cannot settle the argument — Stefan Burmeister, in Die Anfänge der
Nutzung des Rades / Wheel and Wagon (Bonn), summarised in Bondár 2018

The Ljubljana Marshes wheel: 72 cm across, two ash planks, oak pegs, a square
axle hole, axle and wheels turning together — I. Šinkovec, "The wheel - 5,200
years", Pokrajinski muzej Maribor, 2014, pp. 6-9; first publication Velušček,
Čufar, Zupančič, Opera Instituti Archaeologici Sloveniae 16, 2009, pp. 197-222

A tenth-diameter axle needs about ten times less effort than a plain roller —
Alacoque, Bulliet, James, Royal Society Open Science 11:240373, 2024

Flintbek: twenty metres of ruts, 3420-3385 cal BC, 32 AMS dates with Bayesian
modelling — D. Mischka, Antiquity 85(329), 2011, pp. 742-758

Uruk, Eanna level IVa: the sign for wagon appears three times, the sign for
sledge thirty-eight — Anthony 2007, p. 66

Sintashta: burial 8, kurgan 2, Kamennyi Ambar-5, 1950-1880 cal BC at 95.4% —
S. Lindner, Antiquity 94(374), 2020, pp. 361-380. Rim of bent wood 1-1.2 m,
ten to twelve square-sectioned spokes, sixteen graves in nine cemeteries —
Anthony 2007, pp. 397-398

Mesoamerica: no draught animals, mountainous terrain, and porters already
sufficient — R. Diehl, M. Mandeville, Antiquity 61(232), 1987, pp. 239-246

Steam coaches ran from 21 February to 22 June 1831, and an axletree broke —
evidence of James Stone, Select Committee on Steam Carriages, 25 August 1831

The tolls were deliberate: the committee names "the intention of the trustees
to obstruct steam as far as possible" — Report of the Select Committee on Steam
Carriages, 12 October 1831

Benz patent DE 37435 C, "Fahrzeug mit Gasmotorenbetrieb", filed 29 January 1886,
granted 2 November 1886

United States Census of 1900, p. 255: 4,192 motor vehicles — 1,681 steam valued
at $1,147,927; 1,575 electric at $2,873,464; 936 hydrocarbon at $878,052

Chassis assembly: twelve hours twenty-eight minutes by hand, one hour
thirty-three minutes on the moving line — Henry Ford, "My Life and Work", ch. V

Ford turnover of 370% in 1913 against an average workforce of 13,623 —
Raff and Summers, table 7

US road deaths: 36 in 1900, 4,079 in 1913, 13,253 in 1921, 31,204 in 1930 —
FHWA table FI-200

"GM Apology to Nader" is a section heading in the Ribicoff subcommittee hearing
of 22 March 1966. The Motor Vehicle Safety Act is Public Law 89-563, signed
9 September 1966

Arab OPEC output fell by 4.4 million barrels a day, 7.5% of world production —
J. Hamilton, with Kilian's caveat that the embargo effect is overstated

The 55 mph limit saved just under 2% of fuel; of about 9,100 fewer deaths,
researchers credit 3,000-5,000 to the limit itself — Transportation Research
Board, Special Report 204

WHAT THIS FILM DELIBERATELY LEAVES OUT

Bertha Benz's drive. The story first appears in Carl Benz's 1925 memoir, 37 years
after the event. No contemporary document exists in the Wiesloch town archive or
the Mercedes-Benz corporate archive, and all three participants later denied that
she drove. It is a corporate legend, so it is not in this film.

The potter's wheel as the ancestor of the transport wheel. The specialist
literature does not make that link.

ARCHIVE
Library of Congress - U.S. National Archives - Wikimedia Commons
Full list of materials and authors is in the pinned comment.