Ljubljana Marshes Wheel

Ljubljana Marshes Wheel

Having a radius of 70 centimetres (28 in), the wheel is made of ash and oak. The aperture for the 120 centimetres (47 in) long axle is square, which means that the wheel and the axle rotated together. (The depicted wheel is a replica.)
Material	Ash wood
Created	Chalcolithic (approx. 5,150 BP)
Discovered	2002 in Ljubljana Marshes, Slovenia
Present location	Ljubljana City Museum, Ljubljana

The Ljubljana Marshes Wheel is a wooden wheel that was found in the Ljubljana Marshes some 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, in 2002. Radiocarbon dating, performed in the VERA laboratory (Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator) in Vienna, showed that it is approximately 5,150 years old, which makes it the oldest wooden wheel yet discovered. It was discovered by a team of Slovene archeologists from the Ljubljana Institute of Archaeology, a part of the Research Center at the Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences, under the guidance of Anton Velušček.

Remainings of pile dwellings were discovered in the Ljubljana Marshes as early as in 1875. Since 2011, the site has been protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as an example of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps, a special form of dwellings in areas with lakes and marshes. The archaeologists at the excavation site identified over one thousand piles in the river-bed of the Ig river, near Ig. They reconstructed the dwellings of 3.5 by 7 metres (11 ft × 23 ft) in size, separated by approximately 2 to 3 metres (6 ft 7 in to 9 ft 10 in). The analyses of the piles revealed that the dwellings were repaired each year and that a new house had to be built on the same place in as little as 10 to 20 years.

The oldest inhabitants settled in the region as early as 9,000 years ago; in the Mesolithic they built temporary residences on isolated rocks in the marsh and on the fringe and they lived by hunting and gathering. The permanent settlements were not built until the first farmers appeared approximately 6,000 years ago in the time of the Neolithic.

The wooden wheel belonged to a prehistoric two-wheel cart – a pushcart. Similar wheels have been found in the hilly regions of Switzerland and southwest Germany, but the Ljubljana Marshes one is bigger and older. It shows that wooden wheels appeared almost simultaneously in Mesopotamia and Europe.