Perhaps the greatest function of the wheel is to allow a person to move objects that greatly exceed their own weight quickly.
The most common use for making pottery wheels on a pottery wheel is for transportation. Before the invention of the wheel, the ancients used skids to carry heavy objects. The simplest sled is an inclined plane, and the more complex ones will put a few rollers under the heavy objects - the ancient Egyptians used this method to pile huge stones into pyramids. Although the ancient Egyptians should have been inspired by the roller to invent the wheel, the ancient Egyptians were not the first to use the wheel.
Technological advances enabled by the use of the wheel are accompanied by corresponding far-reaching institutional changes. Population growth allowed some villages to develop into cities ruled by new religious dignitaries and later military and administrative chiefs. The emergence of cities was made possible by increases in agricultural productivity. The increase in agricultural productivity created a surplus of food to feed the newly created priestly class, soldiers, and officials. This development is not sudden or one-sided. Many people have debated: Does technological change determine institutional change, or does institutional change determine technological change? This is reminiscent of a debate about an early stage of human evolution: Did the human brain come first before human culture, including language and toolmaking? It has been agreed that the former interacts with the latter, that language and tool-making are both causes and consequences of brain development. It appears that the same is true of technological change and social change, first interacting with each other and finally bringing about urban revolution and civilization. The transition from tribesmen to peasants by Neolithic cultivators by supplying surpluses to the ruling dignitaries was not at some point agreed or compelled to do so; rather, it was a gradual process. The process of development in which cause and effect interact and are closely related.
