• Philharmonic3@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    Why is the first wheel always shown as stone? Surely a log would have lent itself to the discovery of rolling much more readily

    • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Do you see any trees in that drawing? It seems cavemen existed exclusively in barren volcanic wastelands.

    • deltatangothree@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      I would guess logs don’t lend themselves to the historical/fossil whatever record as well as stone does. The oldest wheels we’ve found are stone because any potential log ones deteriorated, and this was all before written records.

      • marcos@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        That entire idea is so absurd I had to check.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel

        Looks like the first transportation-related evidence of wheel we have was made of clay (probably because it was a toy). The first transportation-related actual wheel that we found was made of wood. The first wheel-shaped object we found wasn’t used for transportation and was made of wood.

        Stone is just a really bad material for making wheels. But I wrongly expected to see some metal ones on the list.

      • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        Imagin if logs were actually perfect material for designing that one shape that produces infinite energy, food, and research.

    • betanumerus@lemmy.ca
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      6 hours ago

      When it was on TV, the Flintstones cartoon made it to everyone’s mind.

      Rolling logs is something even beavers have probably been rediscovering over the eras.

      • UncleMagpie@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        The Flintstones fascinated me when I was a kid because everything had already been invented but it was just made out of rocks and wood instead of metal and plastic. So for example they had a stone dishwasher appliance powered by a bird or something.

    • crimsonpoodle@pawb.social
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      9 hours ago

      Might have been grinding wheels for wheat; don’t have to be replaced as often and if in a stone track don’t have to worry as much about breakage. But that’s just a theory…. A history theory… or at least a history conjecture