This old wheel rolls right in with my old theme week. After being on the road for a while yesterday, it would have been a much bumpier and rough ride with old wooden wheels than rubber tires. Yet wheels like this carried settlers across the nation and were a critical part of survival. Wooden wheels of different sizes were part of their daily life for transportation and work.
The earliest known examples of wooden spoked wheels are in the context of the Andronovo culture, dating to ca 2000 BC. Soon after this, horse cultures of the Caucasus region used horse-drawn spoked-wheel war chariots for the greater part of three centuries. They moved deep into the Greek peninsula where they joined with the existing Mediterranean peoples to give rise, eventually, to classical Greece after the breaking of Minoan dominance and consolidations led by pre-classical Sparta and Athens. Celtic chariots introduced an iron rim around the wheel in the 1st millennium BC. The spoked wheel was in continued use without major modification until the 1870s, when wire wheels and pneumatic tires were invented.
I much rather look at wooden wheels than a pile of rubber tires especially considering the skills the wheelwright needed to make the spokes, rim and hub and to fit them all together.
Wooden Wheel Spokes
