Oldest wheel

The oldest surviving wheel is the Ljubljana Marshes Wheel, discovered by achaeologists on 29 March 2002 near Ljubljana, Slovenia. The wheel, which was found amidst a Chalcolithic (or late neolithic) settlement known as Stare Gmajne, has been dated to around 3,150 BCE.

The wheel was found along with its axle, presevered in the mud of the Ljubljansko barje – an area of peat bog near the Slovenian capital. It belonged to a community that lived in pile-dwellings (houses built on stilts in the marshes). It was older than the previous record holder (a wooden wheel found in Germany) by more than a century.

Despite its great antiquity, the wheel appears to have been made with considerable skill, presumably by someone with extensive experience making such things. The body of the wheel is formed from two thick planks of ash, jointed with a tongue and groove and cut into a circle. This solid disc is reinforced with ash battens hammered into precisely cut grooves at a 90 degree angle to the grain direction in the main planks. The axle is made from oak, and fits into a square hole in the center of the wheel.

This combination of ash (hard-wearing and with excellent dimensional stability) and oak (extremely strong and resistant to bending) would remain the standard wood choice for wheelwrights across much of Europe until the early 20th century.

The wheel is thought to have originated in the ancient near east around 5,000 BCE, but no examples of actual wheels from this period have survived.