Earliest evidence of the wheel? 7,500 year old toy “car” found

February 26, 2012 7:19 pm

A stone car with two axles and 4 wheels dating from about 7,500 years ago has been found near the North Kurdish town of Qoser. It would seem to be earliest known evidence of a wheeled vehicle.

7,500 year old stone car from Qoser

The invention of the wheel is thought to have been in the late Neolithic and perhaps around 12,000 years ago. The earliest evidence found of circles appears in caves where the paintings date from 30,000 years ago. But it is likely that the shape of the circle itself was known to man even earlier – perhaps even 100,000 years ago. But how the shape of the circle developed into rollers and then wheels remains a mystery.

Wikipedia: Evidence of wheeled vehicles appears from the mid 4th millennium BC, near-simultaneously in Mesopotamia, the Northern Caucasus (Maykop culture) and Central Europe, so that the question of which culture originally invented the wheeled vehicle remains unresolved and under debate.The earliest well-dated depiction of a wheeled vehicle (here a wagon—four wheels, two axles), is on the Bronocice pot, a ca. 3500–3350 BC clay pot excavated in a Funnelbeaker culture settlement in southern Poland.

But this find is about 2,000 years older and is now on show at Mardin Museum.

For what they were .. we are

The oldest toy car is as old as 5500 BCE and was found near the North Kurdish town of Qoser (Kızıltepe). The car is worked on stone, has axles of different length and pre-dates Indoeuropeans by a lot.

Previously the oldest known toy cars were from Turkmenistan (Altyndepe) or Mesopotamia, being dated to the fourth millennium BCE.

Other findings in the same site (also worked on stone) are dolls and whistles, the latter still able to produce sounds. These however could be more recent, from the fourth millennium.

Archaeologist Mesut Alp said that the toy car, which is made out of stone, dates back to the late Stone Age and is thought to be 7,500 years old. …. The second new relic on show at the museum is an ancient stone tablet inscribed with writing. Following exhaustive historical analysis, the writing on the 5 centimeter stone — which was uncovered at an excavation site at the Gırnavas Mound, 4km from the historic district of Nusaybin — was deemed to be the content of an ancient title deed. ……

…. comprehensive information on the two finds will be provided soon.

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Earliest evidence of the wheel? 7,500 year old toy “car” found

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