The Wheel Is Younger Than You Think

Ask anyone to name the greatest invention and most people say the wheel. It feels like the beginning of everything.

It was not. By the time the wheel arrives, humans had already tamed fire, farmed grain, woven cloth, fired pottery and pulled metal out of rock.

The delay was never about imagination. Rolling is easy to notice. The hard part is the piece almost nobody remembers, and it needed a tool that simply did not exist yet.