Transport & space · c. 2,000 BCE

Spoked wheel

Replacing solid disks with spokes makes wheels light enough for speed.

Spoked wheels appear around 2000 BCE in the Sintashta culture of the southern Urals. Bronze tools allowed precise woodworking of hubs, spokes and bent felloes. The much lighter wheel made fast horse-drawn vehicles possible and is still the basic design of bicycle wheels.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

The wheel 3500 BCE
Bronze 4650 BCE

What it led to 1

Chariot 2000 BCE

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Selected milestones in human travel speed Latest: 39.9k km/h (1969) Source: Wikipedia: Horse gait (gallop 40-48 km/h); Wikipedia: List of speed records in rail transport