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.

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…

Ancient Mesopotamian nerd, I salute you!

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”.