Earliest wheeled vehicles in Mesopotamia
- Date
- c. 3300–3000 BCE
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- Mesopotamia (Iraq)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
Around the turn of the fourth to third millennium BCE the rotary technology developed for the potter's wheel was adapted to transport, producing the first wheeled vehicles.
Evidence for early wheeled carts and wagons appears in Mesopotamia and neighbouring regions in the form of pictographic signs on tablets, schematic vehicle images on pottery and seals, and miniature clay models. By around 3000 BCE the Sumerians were using both two-wheeled and four-wheeled vehicles, initially solid disc wheels, to move people and heavy goods. Wheeled transport multiplied the loads that could be hauled, supported long-distance trade in materials such as timber, stone and metal that the alluvial plain lacked, and would later be turned to military use in the battle wagons depicted on Sumerian monuments. The wheel-and-axle is among the most influential mechanical inventions in history, reshaping economies, warfare and engineering far beyond Mesopotamia.
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Related science, technology & invention events
- Invention of cuneiform writing at Urukc. 3300–3100 BCE
- Earliest Egyptian Hieroglyphs at Abydos (Tomb U-j)c. 3250 BCE
- Ötzi the Iceman, a Copper Age life preserved in icec. 3300 BCE
- Invention of the wheel and wheeled vehiclesc. 3500 BCE
- Invention of the potter's wheel in Mesopotamiac. 3500 BCE
- Early horse domestication on the Eurasian steppec. 3500 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
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