Comments by "bakters" (@bakters) on "driving 4 answers"
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1.49 - Rolling log is implied to precede the sled. I don't know why? Sleds are useful for transporting any moderately heavy load over less than perfectly even surface, as it prevents the load from getting stuck on bumps. If you "pave" the way with wood, you can even achieve lower friction. Then , on a paved or evened out terrain, it finally makes sense to try the rolling log. On uneven ground it will just get stuck.
Just saying what makes sense to me, I don't know what is most commonly assumed. (However, the illustration presented at 2:11 seems to agree with my view. We can see a loaded sled, on rolling logs, on a smoothed or paved road. Not a bare stone block with rollers underneath, being pulled over uneven ground.)
Re: Why the wheel came in so late.
While the reasons presented here are definitely correct, I like to rather think about who might have benefited from the wheel the most. While the wheel is so incredibly useful, everybody did benefit from it, but not to the same extent.
1. Primitive wheels are no good for moving heavy loads.
People tend to overlook it, but it's absolutely true. The load bearing capacity of a simple sled is an order of magnitude higher than that of a primitive wheel. Or even a sophisticated one! Sleds were used for big objects for a very long time after the wheel was already known.
2. Sedentary people do not move much in general. That's why they are called sedentary.
From that I propose, that more nomadic lifestyle is likely to come up with this invention. The people who absolutely need to move, or they starve. For them, having even slightly better transportation capabilities is of great value.
3. Wheels are no good on uneven ground.
Currently, mountains and heavily wooded areas are still converted into "flatlands" in order to use the wheel (roads, rails). Where it's not possible, people still use horses, which walk. When horses can't go, they carry stuff on their own backs.
What it all amounts to?
I believe, that in search for the wheel inventors, we should look to the nomadic people (modest loads, high distance), who lived on, or at least in close proximity of the flatlands. Basically, Eurasian steppe. Yes, finds will be hard in this terrain...
So finally, back to the original question of "why so late?". In my approach the wheel came in so late, because people who could benefit from it the most, started colonizing the environment with the strongest "need" very late.
Re: Greeks did that, Egyptians did the next thing.
How do we know that? We don't. It's probably the earliest finds which come from those areas, but you don't get finds where you don't dig, do you?
Anyway, if that approach is true, I'm a Pole so I want to claim that invention for my nation. (That's reductio ad absurdum, if it's not obvious!). The earliest depiction of a wagon, or any other wheeled vehicle, happens to come from Poland. Obviously, it means nothing
But if people claim it does? Gimme! ;-)
Okay, it's a long post already.
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Re: "A "true" scientist does not believe in absolute truth, which doesn't even exit, since all we have are our current "best guesses", which are subject to change"
That's the creed of a postmodern philosopher, not a scientist. Scientist believe in objective truth. Maybe not absolute, since that implies we would know everything there is to know about something, but they do believe that objective truth exists.
If objective truth does not exist, what do they even try to discover ? Yet another subjective opinion? Of course not. When they tried to measure the circumference of the Earth, they assumed that the Earth does have a real circumference, not just an opinion about it. When they tried to figure out if planets orbit the Earth or the Sun, they assumed that one of those statements is true, while the other is false.
Also, scientists do not "question everything, including themselves". They just don't do it. Even if they speculate, they adopt their starting assumptions, which aren't questioned until the model collapses. Like in: Nobody questions if America exists. Nobody asks if we are all deluded about its existence.
That's simply not how it's done.
The philosophy you present here is not accepted by the scientists. It's a new concept, which in my opinion, explains very well the failure of philosophy at its stated goal. It does not explain the unquestioned success of science, which resulted in us knowing for sure that electrons exist, that the outer space is empty, that genetic code is contained in every cell in the body, etc, etc.
It's the philosophers who might doubt if any true statements can be made. Scientist do not.
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