[zen_of_prog]

His arguments definitely don't have the same academic rigor as someone in their own field, but I felt like everything was pretty defensible.

Ox-drawn plows are at least 4000 years old, and I feel like seeing an animal pulling a plow all day begs for wheels so you can pull anything anywhere. At least more than the combination of a wheel and a stick, to apply mechanical advantage to lift and then move things.

The oldest wheelbarrow that we know of is from ~200 BCE, and the oldest chariots from ~2000 BCE. This tracks with animals pulling your stuff either being more obvious or to there being a higher ratio between payoff and cost of development.

You're right that it often comes down to dumb luck, but I think those lucky moments are usually facilitated by other factors. That's why there are often simultaneous and independent inventions (multiple discovery), and why tech startups aren't geographically uniformly distributed.

[ramblenode]

Wheels are also more advanced than they might appear to us nowadays. They are kind of a quantum leap because only a good wheel is useful, and a good wheel has multiple components that have to be fashioned and integrated in just the right way. Even if the idea of a wheelbarrow exists, it might not seem worth the investment when there isn't an established wheel industry and the wheel will need lots of tinkering and adjustment. But a wheeled cart driven by animals is a BIG improvement over saddlebags that would be worth it for travelers and soldiers to figure out.

[George83728]

Wheels sturdy enough to carry light loads are easier to fabricate than wheels sturdy enough to carry heavy loads. Similarly low-speed wheels are easier to create than wheels suitable for a chariot pulled by a galloping horse.

So the thousands of years gap between heavy carts and chariots vs wheelbarrows, isn't something you can explain by citing insufficient technology or unsuitable environmental conditions. I think it all comes down to nobody had that idea yet.

[incogitor]

It is his field. He's a geographer and a biophysicist, not only an ornithologist. Understanding geographic and environment contributions to evolution is explicitly in his wheelhouse.

[wilg]

Neither a geographer nor a biophysicist is a wheel historian.