wheel

wheel Through the many millennia of the Paleolithic period and the Neolithic period no use of the wheel was known to humans. Its use was not known to the Native Americans until the Europeans introduced it. In the Old World it came into use in the Bronze Age, when oxen and horses were first used as draft animals and wheeled vehicles were devised. Wheels for vehicles were at first solid wooden disks; spoked wheels were introduced c.2700 BC The potter's wheel was invented in the Bronze Age, earlier pottery being made, like that of the Native Americans, without the use of the wheel. See gear ; tire ; wheel and axle .

Bibliography: See R. J. Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology (1955); E. Tunis, Wheels (1955); W. Owen et al., ed., Wheels (1972).

wheel a wheel is the emblem of St Catherine of Alexandria (a wheel here is the instrument on which the bodies of criminals were broken as a method of execution).
wheel of Fortune the wheel which Fortune is fabled to turn, as an emblem of mutability. Also called Fortune's wheel.
wheels within wheels used to indicate that a situation is complicated and affected by secret or indirect influences; perhaps originally after the description of the vision of four creatures in Ezekiel 1:16.

See also break a butterfly on a wheel, the wheel has come full circle, fly on the wheel, oil the wheels, spin one's wheels.

wheel Circular structure that revolves around a central axis. Before the wheel was invented, heavy loads were sometimes moved by rolling them on logs or on rounded stones. More than 5000 years ago, sections of tree trunks were cut to form the first wheels for carts. Spoked wheels were introduced several hundred years later. Eventually, the wheel was used in simple machines, such as the waterwheel and potter's wheel.