Lol these guys are so stupid! Clearly the rock wagon is being shown backwards! A clear indication that they people who found this is doesn't know what they got. I mean look at the driver's seat pocket.
Looking at the design of those wheels I feel like there was thought and probably iteration there. Those long thick hubs to provide durability and stability using a material not really suited to the use case. The whole thing was probably able to be made fairly quickly. Quite impressive really.
My favorite "kids have always been kids" moment in history is Iddin-Sin's letter to his mom, bitching about how he "has nothing decent to wear" and "whose fault is that really".
Allow them to be bored, out of it comes creativity. We used to have one day a week without
any tech and they build dens in the woods, built a raft for the river and came back soaking
wet, they played D&D with pen and paper.
You have to give them the freedom to be bored, get filthy, get lost, covered in art stuff.
Also, that kid from Mesopotamia probably had chores anytime he looked bored.
I was gonna say "the timeless need to keep the kids quiet"... but I bet there was some ancient Mesopotamian nerd who made dozens of these and built a little model city and was like: one day the the wagons will drive themselves and there'll be roads everywhere and the people will live in tall buildings and fly in the sky...
Oh yeah good point! That ancient Mesopotamian nerd will also be like: "And they'll make up stories about talking ponies.... and they'll dress up like furry animals and have meetings together!" Oh, Mesopotamian nerd, you were born way too soon...
Looks like the wheels would come off pretty easily.
I wonder whether humans have evolved a fascination with vehicles. Like, thinking carts and chariots were cool made it more likely for your village to survive or for an individual specifically to reproduce.
I would guess they used wood pegs either end to make it durable. Wood doesn't preserve as well and stone.
There's also no sense of scale. To me it looks like a roller skate. Shaped like a sandal, wider wheel base at the front for stability and it could have have leather or twine round the back of the heal. I could be totally wrong but that was my thinking when looking at it.