Het wiel - deel 2

It must have been quite a job, inventing ‘the wheel’. Imagine a visionary person, showing with pride his invention to the people of the desert.

It is 3000 B.C. There are scarcely any roads, just sand. Civilization is limited to a few settlements. Travelling is by camel. Do you think there is anybody waiting on a wheel? It’s very hard pulling or pushing a wheel through the sand. Isn’t it much easier to transport things on the back of a camel? Therefore, it’s quite unlikely that the wheel has been introduced this way. But how did it happen then? In the following story I will give an explanation, based on the theory that the wheel was invented by human beings or, rather: by children.

How children invented the wheel

In the winter of 2965 B.C., the harvest was excellent. Ibrahim, owner of an orchard of twenty orange trees, collected about 800 oranges, and that never happened before. Ibrahim sold 300 of them in his village and 300 others in the village nearby. He and his his family kept the remaining 200 oranges, and they took the benefits for the whole next year. They never had too little to eat and when they were thirsty, they cut an orange in half and drank the juice of it. For the oranges peels, there was a midden, about ten meters behind the house.

One day, when Ibrahim had a dull moment, he walked along the midden and examined it without any purpose. He took an orange peel; it had been dried out and had become hard, but still flexible. Was it possible to make something of it, like a small boat? He found a few tiny wooden sticks that could serve as the timber and attached them to the inside of the orange peel. After he had done this, he held his creation up to the light. The boat was gorgeous.

Ibrahim gave it to his children and they were very happy. But he went on. He made all kinds of toys like houses and little puppets. Ibrahim became famous and from this time on he could support his family by collecting oranges and making toys. His children had a fantastic youth and everyday they played with the things Ibrahim had made.

Now and then he made something without any purpose. As was the case with the two halves of orange peel, that he had tied toghether. He put it aside and forgot about it. But his children took it and played with it. The four-year-old Mirna came up with the idea to let it fall from the rock, that they used to play on. The other kids of the village immediately followed her example and soon the rock was called the ‘slide’.

The one after the other invention was done. Mohammed, seven years old, bound a string to the object, before it rolled down the rock. With the string still in your hands, you could easily get it up again, much better than to collect it yourself.

Nadira, also seven years old, gave the object to her older brother Hadad, because the two halves had become loose. But Hadad could not fix it by tying them together. Instead, he put an axis in the middle: a small stick, about two centimeters long, with two notches, that held the orange peels in place. Nadira was very pleased with the result and found out new possibilities. While balancing the object on a rope, that she held tight between her hands, she could throw it up and catch it back again.The toy became immensely popular and up to now it still is, as it is known under the name of ‘diabolo’.

The youngest children played with it in their own way. They bound it to a string and pulled it behind them. Tabina, Zahra, Yousef, Rashid, Fatima, Omar, Sharif, Yasar, Hassan and countless children after them got this idea. They especially liked the playing as if there was an invisible force. Indeed, if you imagined that there was no string attached, the object seemed to move on its own. It was magic.

The invention had been made. The children were fascinated by this ‘remote controlled’ toy. They were not aware that they had changed history. It made no difference to them that they were the founders of many things, such as ‘the vehicle’. They just enjoyed it moving the object forward, with only the help of a piece of string. It was a nice thing to do, because it gave them the feeling of having another friend who, by the way, is your subordinate as well. And that is good for hours and hours of fun. For, which toy is so faithful, that it will follow you, wherever you go?

All this time, the adults were not paying attention to these games. Toys are for children, and that’s all you can say about it. Only ages later, the object was noted by a man, named Amin, who was living near the sea. He was surprised by the ease at which the toy was moving on the beach, and he wondered if he could make it on a large scale. Maybe it could be used in a certain way. He might have been right.

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