Why is the first wheel always shown as stone? Surely a log would have lent itself to the discovery of rolling much more readily
this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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Its called the stone age, not the log age, duh.
Not when I'm done with it
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I would guess logs don't lend themselves to the historical/fossil whatever record as well as stone does. The oldest wheels we've found are stone because any potential log ones deteriorated, and this was all before written records.
That entire idea is so absurd I had to check.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel
Looks like the first transportation-related evidence of wheel we have was made of clay (probably because it was a toy). The first transportation-related actual wheel that we found was made of wood. The first wheel-shaped object we found wasn't used for transportation and was made of wood.
Stone is just a really bad material for making wheels. But I wrongly expected to see some metal ones on the list.
Fantastic example of survivorship bias.
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Do you see any trees in that drawing? It seems cavemen existed exclusively in barren volcanic wastelands.
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Wheels were useless anyway until the invention of the axle, around 3500 BCE.
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Because the oldest reference disks we have are millstones? Idk. They always look like millstones to me
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Comedy
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I...I can't tell if this is commentary about now or not. Is that bad?
Neanderthals are representing anti-science right wing government here
Comparing the US Nazis to Neanderthals is an insult to Neanderthals.
Making fun of people's features is not really going to get us anywhere.
Disagree. With Trump, for example, it's one of the proven ways to get under his skin. It's useful to know how to goad people who otherwise have no capacity for empathy, regret, etc..., in my opinion.
Don't shit where you eat. Trump is not reading this post, not even MAGA people.
I'm not. I'm eating where I shit, which is still acceptable under the rules and, as a friendly aside, wildly efficient.
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Agreed
especially considering neanderthals were made extinct largely because of things like violence with homo sapiens, disease introduced by homo sapiens, the relationship (or lack thereof) with dogs, and climate change whilst the competitive advantages around social and cognitive development are relatively slight
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I first read it as neanderthals are less aggressive so they must focus now on weapons. I'm pretty sure the intention is that the guys working on the wheel have to stop because the current leadership are neanderthals.
I think neanderthals were less war-like than humans because humans eradicated all of them, but I'm probably reading too much into it.
I think neanderthals were less war-like than humans because humans eradicated all
Akchually, Neanderthals were humans and we don't know why they disappeared. The idea that homo sapiens eradicated them all is probably a wrong one; their decline begun before the arriving of homo sapiens.
The most recent suggestion I saw is that there were just more sapiens when they started interacting. Interbreeding must have happened, but with new groups of sapiens continuously arriving from the middle east, the neanderthal DNA just got more and more dilute. Eventually "pure" neanderthals no longer existed.
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Akchsually if you look at the genetic markers in modern populations its pretty clear what happened. 🍆💦 👶
They ate egg plant, at which point there were heavy rains which did them in?
The combination of eggplant and deluge turned them all into babies. Unable to hunt or communicate, they were wiped out.
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As I recall one theory is that Neanderthals was absorbed into homo sapiens.
Europeans and Asians also have roughly 2% Neanderthal DNA on average, so it's likely we absorbed a significant chunk of their population into our own.
Pretty sure those 2% refer to the subsection of the genome that is unique to homo sapiens. We have >98% shared DNA among all great apes (including humans)
We also might simply have outbred them. Remember that modern humans have what appears to be detectable Neanderthal DNA so interbreeding has apparently occurred; we might simply have diluted them into perceived extinction. Besides, there doesn't seem evidence for large-scale war.
Of course that's all speculation.
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Huh I never thought about Neanderthals that way, but it makes sense. Crazy that now we refer to them as "less civilized" or more "savage", considering what war is.
To add to that, evidence suggests that, not only were their brains larger than ours, but they likely had a higher capacity to learn than we do. Not to mention them being bigger and stronger than us too. We most certainly were the savages. It seems some things never change.
https://www.fortinberrymurray.com/todays-research/were-the-neanderthals-smarter-than-we-are
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It's fine. The EU welcomes scientists from the USA.
"U.S.-based applications to the European Research Council (ERC) surged five-fold in August 2025"
https://www.politico.eu/article/european-research-council-funding-us-researchers-relocation-europe/
Wheel no good on rough ground. Wheel need road network and specialized labor. Befriend animal. He carry.
"Volcanic eruptions are a scam! Ofk we must build on top of hot smooky mountain!"
"MAKE NEANDERTHAL GREAT AGAIN"
It was the other way around. Making up lies and ganging up on others is a very sapiens thing to do.
The current scientific reality is what we know about Neanderthals implies that you probably wouldn't have noticed much of a difference in either direction.
They were fully aware cousins with art, music, and ritual behavior, and they were closely related enough to interbreed.
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