Modern Homo Sapiens have been around for 200,000 years

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Modern Homo Sapiens have been around for at least 200,000 years, yet only relatively recently invented the wheel. Isn't that a bit surprising? Is the wheel more complex to invent than we think?

I think that's because we homo sapiens as a species are stupid

We didn't have much need for it at first. We lived in smaller communities (actually we were nomadic for most of that period) and didn't have the societal organization to construct proper roads and all the other infrastructure around wheeled transportation.

Once we started inventing, the pace started to pick up quite a bit.

As Orwell says, it has to do with necessity. Small Hunter-Gatherer bands typically don't have much use for wheeled vehicles, so they don't usually develop them. They just don't produce a lot of things to lug around that they can't carry on their backs. Also, the physical environment can have a lot to do with the development of certain technology. In Europe and the Middle East, where there are a lot of wide, flat valleys and plains, wheeled vehicles make more sense than in areas like Mesoamerica, where the environment includes rugged volcanic mountain ranges, thick vegetation and swampy areas. Also, the presence of suitable species to domesticate for draft animals plays a large part. Horses were hunted to extinction in the Americas early in the Paleoindian period, and there simply weren't that many other species that were easily domesticated. In South America, llamas were domesticated, but they're relatively small for draft animals and again, mountains and jungles.

Well H. sapiens have been around for ~200k years, what we call modern H. sapien sapiens have been around for ~60k years. Plus there is absolutely no idea when and where the wheel was invented or first put to use.

We didn't need technology beyond stone spears and fire until agriculture, and agriculture was invented when the ice age got out of the way.

Then we had enough of a food surplus that we could spend some of our time doing things other than getting food.

From what I've read, Homo sapiens originated 400,000 to 250,000 years ago, while modern Homo sapiens originated 200,000 years ago. Either way, most of modern Homo Sapiens' history has been wheelless.

Not so. They say necessity is the mother of invention. The wheel was not invented until the wheel was needed. When humans lived in the woods or grasslands and had no need to build roads or domesticate animals that could pull loads, the wheel was not needed. One needs a wheel when there is stuff to be pulled along and there are roads or paths that can bear wagon traffic.

Humans very cleverly invented throwing spears and sophisticated stone spear and arrow points to aid them in bringing down game/food animals. For example, the Clovis Points go back at least 14,000 years. Prior to that hominids including species of humans that preceded ours were making stone tools for cutting hides and flesh.

The most clever human invention and that includes some of the species that preceded homo sapien was the development of language that enabled humans to discuss future and hypothetical situations. That made planning (particularly planning the hunt) more feasible and permitted the transmission of skills more easily from one generation to the next.

ruveyn

Yes and no. Early development was slow, nothing changed. The little we know of 60,000 years ago shows fire, a stabbing spear, stone tipped, and the wing. The throwing stick had it all, flat bottom, curved top, with designs carved to create turbulence above the wing. All of flight, design, lift, were fully thought out.

The thrown spear and halfted axe come 10,000 years later. While it could be improved hunting methods, the thrown spear lacks the force of a stabbing spear, the axe was better than a hand axe, but the distance would be very useful in hunting men. There seems to have been over population adn the first arms race. Numbers do decline, and technology falls back.

10,000 years later, less people, comes the spear thrower, and the best knife so far. The spear thrower is a superior hunting weapon, and the knife for dressing game.

This period, 40-35,000 years ago is also the first domesticated animals, grains, and the first large vocabulary language, Indo-European. They ate well and told stories, and invented sleds, boats, nets, clothes, shoes, snowshoes, Human drawn sleds work better than a backpack,

This is the dawn of the Mesolithic, and two ice ages ago. The technology survived, but not much developed till 15,000 years ago. Now comes irrigation, the first city, pottery, horses, and the wheel. Tools get smaller, better made and finished, the Neolithic, where the first metals show up.

This was during the last ice age, and when it melted, sea level rose 150 meters, and our era begins. The best lands and most of our history below the waves, starting over in the highlands.

Sumaria starts with fully developed math, writing, irrigated grain and domestic animals, all brought from somewhere else. Older cities with written langiage are found underwater along the coast of India. Stone tablets have been found in France, some language unknown, from 12,000 years ago.

Stonehenge moves massive stones long distances to study the sky. Baalbeck moves huge stones to build, and beyond the ability of moderns. They were intelligent, Using draft animals and the plow, other tools we would know, they produced a lot of grain.

Nothing much changes till 1850. Then machine power starts replacing human and animal power.

More food, more people, more wars, and technology advances.

Modern Homo Sapiens start with Windows 95 with a CD drive and dialup Internet.

Clovis technology appears only in the Americas and dates to around 13,500 ya to 9000 ya. Anything before that in the Americas is referred to as Pre-Clovis and is still hotly debated, although the evidence is steadily mounting for a pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas (the best being 14,300 yo human feces found in cave in Oregon.)

Oregon

Gault Site

exactly.
In the old world there were areas where they actually gave up the wheel (except for potter's wheels).
North Africans used roads and wheeled vehicles when they were part of the Roman Empire. But both roads and wheeled vehicles vanished from the region after the fall of rome and the rise of Islam.

Why maintain roads when its easier ship goods across the sandy desert on camel caravans?