Computer simulations reveal birth of the wheel 6000 years ago

IMAGINE you're a copper miner in south-eastern Europe in the year 3900 BCE. Day after day you haul copper ore through the mine's sweltering tunnels. You've resigned yourself to the gruelling monotony of mining life. Then one afternoon, you witness a fellow worker doing something remarkable.

- ΚΑΙ JAMES

With an odd-looking contraption, he casually transports the equivalent of three times his body weight on a single trip. As he returns to the mine to fetch another load, it suddenly dawns on you that your chosen profession is about to get far less taxing and much more lucrative.

What you don't realise: You're witnessing something that will change the course of history - not just for your tiny mining community, but for all of humanity.

Despite the wheel's immeasurable impact, no one is certain as to who invented it, or when and where it was first conceived. The hypothetical scenario described above is based on a 2015 theory that miners in the Carpathian Mountains in present-day Hungary first invented the wheel nearly 6 000 years ago as a means to transport copper ore.

The theory is supported by the discovery of more than 150 miniaturised wagons by archaeologists working in the region.

These pint-sized, four-wheeled models were made from clay, and their outer surfaces were engraved with a wickerwork pattern reminiscent of the basketry used by mining communities at the time.

Carbon dating later revealed that these wagons are the earliest known depictions of wheeled transport to date.

This theory also raises a question of particular interest to me, an aerospace engineer who studies the science of engineering design. How did an obscure, scientifically naive mining society discover the wheel, when highly advanced civilisations, such as the ancient Egyptians, did not?

A controversial idea

It has long been assumed that wheels evolved from simple wooden rollers. But until recently no one could explain how or why this transformation took place. What's more, beginning in the 1960s, some researchers started to express strong doubts about the roller-to-wheel theory.