Energy and transport
Meanwhile, humans were learning
to harness other forms of energy. The earliest known use of wind power is the
sailboat.The earliest record of a ship under sail is shown on an Egyptian pot
dating back to 3200 BC.From prehistoric times, Egyptians probably used the
power of the Nile annual floods to irrigate their lands, gradually learning to
regulate much of it through purposely built irrigation channels and ‘catch’
basins. Similarly, the early peoples of Mesopotamia, the Sumerians, learned to
use the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for much the same purposes. But more
extensive use of wind and water (and even human) power required another
invention.
According to archaeologists,
the was invented around 4000 B.C. probably independently and nearly
simultaneously in Mesopotamia (in present-day the Northern Caucasus and Central
Europe. Estimates on when this may have occurred range from 5500 to 3000 B.C., with
most experts putting it closer to 4000 B.C.
The oldest artifacts with drawings that depict wheeled carts date from about 3000 B.C.; however, the wheel may have been in use for millennia before these drawings were made. There is also evidence from the same period of time that wheels were used for the production of (Note that the original potter’s wheel was probably not a wheel, but rather an irregularly shaped slab of flat wood with a small hollowed or pierced area near the center and mounted on a peg driven into the earth. It would have been rotated by repeated tugs by the potter or his assistant.) More recently, the oldest-known wooden wheel in the world was found in the Ljubljana marshes of Slovenia.
The oldest artifacts with drawings that depict wheeled carts date from about 3000 B.C.; however, the wheel may have been in use for millennia before these drawings were made. There is also evidence from the same period of time that wheels were used for the production of (Note that the original potter’s wheel was probably not a wheel, but rather an irregularly shaped slab of flat wood with a small hollowed or pierced area near the center and mounted on a peg driven into the earth. It would have been rotated by repeated tugs by the potter or his assistant.) More recently, the oldest-known wooden wheel in the world was found in the Ljubljana marshes of Slovenia.
The invention of the wheel revolutionized
activities as disparate as transportation, war, and the production of pottery
(for which it may have been first used). It did not take long to discover that
wheeled wagons could be used to carry heavy loads and fast (rotary) potters’
wheels enabled early mass production of pottery. But it was the use of the
wheel as a transformer of energy (through water wheels, windmills, and even
treadmills) that revolutionized the application of nonhuman power sources.
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