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Many modern scholars suggest that the first potter's wheel was first developed by the ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia. [3] A stone potter's wheel found at the Sumerian city of Ur in modern-day Iraq has been dated to about 3129 BC, [ 4 ] but fragments of wheel-thrown pottery of an even earlier date have been recovered in the same area. [ 4 ]
The wheel initially took the form of the potter's wheel. The new concept led to wheeled vehicles and mill wheels. The Sumerians' cuneiform script is the oldest (or second oldest after the Egyptian hieroglyphs ) which has been deciphered (the status of even older inscriptions such as the Jiahu symbols and Tartaria tablets is controversial).
The invention of the wheel has also been important for technology in general, important applications including the water wheel, the cogwheel (see also antikythera mechanism), the spinning wheel, and the astrolabe or torquetum. More modern descendants of the wheel include the propeller, the jet engine, the flywheel and the turbine.
Their wheels were solid blocks; spokes were not invented until c. 2000 BC. The domestication of the donkey was also an advance of considerable importance, because they were more useful than the wheel as a means of transport in mountainous regions and for long-distance travel, before the spoked wheel was invented.
Arnold Pacey and Irfan Habib propose the spinning wheel was most likely invented in the Middle-East by the early 11th century. There is evidence pointing to the spinning wheel being known in the Middle-East by 1030, and the earliest clear illustration of the spinning wheel is from Baghdad, drawn in 1237.
The history of Sumer spans through the 5th to 3rd millennia BCE in southern Mesopotamia, and is taken to include the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods. Sumer was the region's earliest known civilization and ended with the downfall of the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2004 BCE.
Ubaid 1-2 pottery had dense, geometric, and abstract decoration. Later pottery was less decorated, with bands and swags being the most common patterns of decoration. The slow potter's wheel came into use during Ubaid 3-4, which may have played a role in the decrease in decoration. [6]
The Indus civilization did not even exist or enter written history during the period that the archeological evidence tells us the Sumerians had invented a wheel. Between 500-1000 years before any Indian civilization existed.