{"id":11317,"date":"2021-04-04T19:29:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T02:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=11317"},"modified":"2021-04-12T19:37:24","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T02:37:24","slug":"wheelmaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2021\/04\/04\/wheelmaker\/","title":{"rendered":"Wheelmaker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from WIRED<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who Invented the Wheel? And How Did They Do It?<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

The wagon\u2014and the wagon wheel\u2014could not have been put together in stages. Either it works, or it doesn\u2019t. And it enabled humans to spread rapidly into huge parts of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by CODY CASSIDY<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Woman's
ILLUSTRATION: CASEY CHIN<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of years before the invention of the wheel, some unlucky hominin stepped on a loose rock or unstable log and\u2014just before they cracked their skull\u2014discovered that a round object reduces friction with the ground. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The inevitability of this moment of clarity explains the ancient ubiquity of rollers, which are simply logs put underneath heavy objects. The Egyptians and the Mesopotamians used them to build their pyramids and roll their heavy equipment, and the Polynesians to move the stone moai statues on Easter Island. But rollers aren\u2019t terribly efficient, because they have to be replaced as they roll forward, and even if they\u2019re pinned underneath, friction makes them horribly difficult to move. The solution\u2014and the stroke of brilliance\u2014was the axle. Yet despite the roller\u2019s antiquity, it doesn\u2019t appear that anyone, anywhere, discovered the wheel and axle until an ingenious potter approximately 6,000 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at WIRED<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from WIRED Who Invented the Wheel? And How Did They Do It? The wagon\u2014and the wagon wheel\u2014could not have been put together in stages. Either it works, or it doesn\u2019t. And it enabled humans to spread rapidly into huge parts of the world. by CODY CASSIDY ILLUSTRATION: CASEY CHIN HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of years before the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}