The Oldest Wooden Wheel in the World

I like history. Actually, I don’t like boring dates and names which are stereotypes for history, but I really love part of history that is called archeology. As a child I even considered idea to study archeology but then nature and forestry prevailed. I was born in Ljubljana and lived near Ljubljana Marshes, which is large, flat wetland, stretching on the south outskirt of Ljubljana. Ljubljana Marshes was in prehistoric and even Roman times (2.000 years ago) a large, shallow lake. Archeologist have found a lot of Paleolithic artifacts (ceramics, fishnets weights, bones of fish, game and domestic animals, stone tools and weapons, canoes made of one timber…) from the culture that was living there around 4.500 BC. They were dressed in animal skins or linen clothes and lived in wooden/mud cottages, they built on the stilts they had put on the lake shore… Of course I could not miss the opportunity to see the exhibition of the oldest wooden wheel with an axle, which is over 5.200 years old – according to the analyses the wheel is dated between 3.350 and 3.100 BC – which was found in 2002 while researching the crannog settlement at Stare gmajne near Vrhnika. Besides the remains of the wheel, they also found the axle which was separated from the wheel. The wheel and the axle belong to a prehistoric two-wheel cart. The exhibition took place from May 2013 to April 2014 at the City Museum of Ljubljana and was very well prepared. Now the exhibition is taking a tour to European cities.
Photo Gallery: The Oldest Wooden Wheel