1 Kings 7:33 - "The wheels were made like a chariot wheel; their axles, their rims, their spokes, and their hubs, were all cast."

Nahum 3:2 - "The crack of whip, and rumble of wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot!"

In the fourth millennium B.C., some Sumerian craftsman built the first known wheeled vehicle. With wheels on axles, one ox could now haul two to three times as much weight as before. The Sumerians’ solid wooden wheel, which has been called the greatest mechanical invention of all time, remained essentially unchanged for centuries. The ancient wheelwrights made wheels from wooden planks, which were pegged together, forming a solid wooden disk.

It wasn’t until some 1,900 years later that lighter, spoked wheels came into commo…