How Slovakia almost invented the wheel
30 October 2024
Who invented the wheel? Was it in Mesopotamia or in Anatolia, as scientific consensus goes, or was it somewhere else completely? Well, Czech news outlet ČT24 last week published an article citing American scientists claiming that the wheel was created in today's Slovakia. Slovak media quickly took over this fascinating piece of news and gladly appropriated the possible wheel-founder title.
Unfortunately, the claim turned out to be a misinterpretation, as the original scientific article doesn't imply Slovak innovativeness. None of the media outlets jumping on this news contacted the original authors of the study until journalists from Denník N uncovered that the article instead attributed the invention of the wheel to miners in the Carpathian region of Baden-Boleráz culture. This culture was also spread in Czechia, Hungary, and Austria – and not only Slovakia.
 | Tamara Kanuchova The misunderstanding probably arose because Boleráz, a village where the culture was first recognised and named after, is in western Slovakia. Connecting a culture defined by a wide geographical territory to a nation-state emerging circa 6,000 years later seems like a bit of a historical stretch. Either way, the research only modelled the presumed development of a wheel based on assumptions about miners' carts. Until there is physical evidence, Slovakia needs to find another way to rewrite history. |
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