How it began
The wheel was made by people who lived in pile dwellings on the Ljubljana Marsh, in the territory of present-day Slovenia, some 20 kilometers south of Ljubljana. It was found in 2002 at the Stare gmajne pile dwelling settlement by archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, led by Anton Velušček. Radiocarbon dating at the VERA laboratory in Vienna put its age at roughly 5,100 to 5,350 years.
Before it existed
People had settled the marsh region about 9,000 years ago. In the Mesolithic they built temporary shelters on isolated rocks and at the edges of the marsh and lived by hunting and gathering. Permanent settlements came only with the first farmers about 6,000 years ago. The pile dwellers built houses about 3.5 by 7 meters on wooden piles, repaired them every year, and rebuilt them on the same spot every 10 to 20 years.
How it works
The wheel is about 72 centimeters across and made of ash wood, built mainly from two planks held together by four cross braces fitted into carved slots. The axle, about 124 centimeters long, is made of oak. The hole in the wheel is square and the axle was fixed with oak wedges, so the axle turned together with the wheels rather than the wheels spinning on a fixed axle. The wood came from a tree about 80 years old that grew near the settlement.
What lasted
Similar wheels have been found in the hilly regions of Switzerland and southwest Germany, but the Ljubljana Marsh wheel is bigger and older. The find suggests that wooden wheels may have appeared in Europe almost at the same time as in Mesopotamia, where surviving wheels date from significantly later. It gave researchers a securely dated example of early wheeled transport in Europe.
Where it stands today
The wheel and axle are kept at the City Museum of Ljubljana. The pile dwelling sites of the Ljubljana Marsh, first discovered in 1875, have been protected since 2011 as part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. Research on the marsh settlements continues, including studies of how the pile dwellers managed nearby woodland.
