Our language must show the way: can we finally trace the origin of the wheel after more than 5,000 years?

The wheel. Such a fundamental technological invention for humanity that we still use it extensively more than 5,000 years after it was invented. Without the wheel, we would be forced to transport everything on foot or let livestock do the job for us.

Although the wheel has played a central role for millennia, we still don't know exactly where and when the wheel was invented, despite the strenuous efforts of archaeologists, among others. 

»Within a couple of hundred years, you go from not having wheels to having what we would think are wheels. As soon as you have a functional wheel, it spreads. But as linguists, we can see that, hey, when someone invents something new, the invention spreads, but the word for the invention also spreads,« says Thomas Olander, Professor at the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen, and continues:

»When the wheel appears about 3,500 years BCE, it happens in all sorts of places. In Mesopotamia in the Middle East, but also in Central Europe, present-day Germany, Poland and Hungary, there are all kinds of different indications that there are wheels. In Mesopotamia, there is written evidence for wheels. Here they have very early writing, and they write about wheels in very early documents. In Europe, there are pictures and clay models of wagons and archaeological traces of wheels and axles. And in the steppe area of Russia and Ukraine, you find archaeological traces of wagons and wheels.« 

Now it's time to go beyond archaeology. Language can help us in trying to get closer to the origin of the wheel. 

This approach is an important part of the motivation for the research project being awarded the Original Idea of the Year 2025 award by Independent Research Fund Denmark.

When a thing is invented, it is often referred to by a word that the inventors give it. In other languages, the word becomes a loanword. A simple example is a computer that was invented around the time of World War II and has the same name in many of the world's languages. The loanword can subsequently be traced back in time.

Languages develop according to certain patterns

In reality, it was Rasmus G. Bjørn, Postdoc on the project, who came to Thomas Olander with the idea of trying to trace the origin of the wheel by using language as a detective tool.

»A computer is called computer in Zulu, in Hawaiian and in Tagalog in the Philippines. In Catalan, it's called an ordinador, but we can still trace the word because it appears along with the computer. We can do the same with the word wheel if it sounds the same in different languages that are otherwise not related to each other,« says Rasmus G. Bjørn.

Language history works in the way that if a word has been present in Danish for 1,000 years, it has followed certain developments in the pronunciation of Danish since it entered the language.

This means that if a word has only entered the Danish language 200 years ago, it has not followed all the sound changes that have taken place in the years 1000 to 1800. Thus, the linguists can spot that something is going on. The word will simply sound different than it should if it had appeared in Danish for 1,000 years.

Even if the word is borrowed from a related language such as German or English, it is possible to see that the word cannot be an inherited word, but must be a loanword.

»With our method, we can look at words that have to do with wheels. It can be a wheel, cart, axle or shaft of a wagon. We look at these words in a lot of different languages in Europe and Asia. We will be able to see whether the words seem to have been in each language for a very long time, or whether they have come in at a later date. In this way, by following the words back in time, we can see how they have spread between the languages. If the words have spread from a certain language family, it can be an argument that the wheel originated in a certain geographical area,« explains Thomas Olander.

»There are a lot of unknowns, but there are also a lot of knowns. For example, archaeologists know that the wheel did not enter China until about 4,000 years ago, and therefore it is not the Chinese who invented the wheel,« adds Rasmus G. Bjørn.

The theories have been around for up to 200 years

As part of the project, Thomas Olander and Rasmus G. Bjørn go so far back in time that there are no written sources. With the help of linguistic regularities, they can simply calculate backwards in time, which for the Indo-European language family, to which Danish also belongs, means 6,000 years back.

For more than a hundred years, the prevailing hypothesis among language historians has been that the Indo-European languages originate from the steppe area north of the Black Sea. But it is only with the past 10 years of advances in DNA analysis that key parts of the hypothesis have been confirmed. In other words, analyses of ancient DNA have shown that human migrations, which linguistic research has theorized about, have actually taken place. 

»This means that the theories and hypotheses we have set up since the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask started working on this 200 years ago actually have a basis in reality. So now we dare to approach an archaeologist and say that we can see something linguistically that tells us something about the dynamics that were at play at the time,« says Rasmus G. Bjørn.

All in all, the research project is planned to extend over three years, and the project group will count three people, as a research assistant will also be hired.

In addition, there is an advisory board, consisting of people with insight to be able to guide the project group.

»In addition, there are not just three, four or five language families. There are maybe 15 that are relevant. It is enormously complex, and some of them we know almost nothing about. So, we need to get hold of some experts for those,« explains Rasmus G. Bjørn.

The project culminates in a book

As the icing on the cake, or as the last spoke in the wheel, if you will, the project is supposed to publish a book. Here, the results of the research will be summarized, and experts in linguistics, archaeology and genetics will be invited to provide chapters for the book.

»I would really like us to have the rows for the puzzle laid out in an order on the table where we think it actually makes sense. But I also hope that our answers will encourage criticism and discussion. It will probably not be the answer to everything, but hopefully it will be an important step on the way to the answer to where the wheel has arisen and how it has spread,« says Thomas Olander about his hopes for the project's result.

Rasmus G. Bjørn takes it a step further:

»I would like to turn it all upside down and say that I believe and hope that we will actually come up with such a complex and coherent piece that it can only be in one place. Because when you work with these language families, they are so complex that when you go far back in time, you cannot move the central pieces. They are fixed.«

The puzzle Thomas Olander and Rasmus G. Bjørn are in the process of putting together will form a picture of the origin of the wheel. But it is just as much a picture of who we are as human beings, and that language carries the story in itself.

»What's cool about the way we create linguistic history is that it's very democratic historiography. It is not the kings who decide how the language develops. Language develops as children learn, invent new words and new sound changes, and as grammar develops. It actually comes from the people,« Thomas Olander emphasizes.