This View of Life 
Kingdoms Without Wheels 
Why can’t living creatures — at least most of 
them— evolve wheellike feet? 
by Stephen Jay Gould 
Sisera’s mother thought fondly of 
the booty that her son might bring 
back — “a prey of divers colors of 
needlework” — after meeting the 
armies of Israel led by Deborah and 
Barak (Judges, chapters 4-5). Yet he 
was overdue, and she began to worry: 
“Why tarry the wheels of his chari- 
ots,” she inquired anxiously. And 
rightly did she fear, for Sisera would 
never return. The Canaanite armies 
had been routed, while Jael had just 
transfixed Sisera through the head 
with a nail (a tent post in modern 
translations) — ranking her second to 
Judith among Jewish heroines for the 
gory dispatch of enemies. 
Generals of the biblical armies rode 
on chariots; their apparatus traveled 
on carts. But two thousand years later, 
by the sixth century a.d., the question 
posed by Sisera’s mother could no 
longer be asked, for wheels virtually 
disappeared as a means of transpor- 
tation from Morocco to Afghanistan. 
They were replaced by camels (Rich- 
ard W. Bulliet, The Camel and the 
Wheel , Harvard University Press, 
1975). 
Bulliet cites several reasons for this 
counterintuitive switch. The Roman 
roads had begun to deteriorate and 
camels were not bound to them. 
Craftsmanship in harnesses and wag- 
ons had suffered a sharp decline. But, 
most important, camels (as pack ani- 
mals) were apparently more efficient 
than carts pulled by draft animals 
(even by camels). In a long list of 
reasons for favoring camels to non- 
mechanized transport by wheels, 
Bulliet includes their longevity, 
endurance, power of abstinence from 
food and water, ability to ford rivers 
and traverse rough ground, and sav- 
ings in manpower (a wagon requires 
a man for every two animals, but three 
to six pack camels can be tended by 
a single person). 
We are initially surprised by 
Bulliet’s tale because wheels have 
come to symbolize in our culture the 
sine qua non of intelligent exploitation 
and technological progress. Once in- 
vented, their superiority cannot be 
gainsaid or superseded. Indeed, our 
standard metaphor for deriding the 
repetition of such obvious truths pro- 
claims that such a dull speaker must 
be trying to “reinvent the wheel.” In 
an earlier era of triumphant social 
Darwinism, wheels stood as an ineluc- 
table stage of human progress. The 
“inferior” cultures of Africa slid to 
defeat; their conquerors rolled to vic- 
tory. The “advanced” cultures of Mex- 
ico and Peru might have repulsed 
Cortes and Pizarro if only a clever 
artisan had thought of turning a cal- 
endar stone into a cartwheel. The no- 
tion that carts could ever be replaced 
by pack animals strikes us as not only 
backward but almost sacrilegious. 
The success of camels reemphasizes 
a fundamental theme of these col- 
umns: adaptation, be it biological or 
cultural, represents a better fit to spe- 
cific, local environments, not an in- 
evitable stage in a ladder of progress. 
Wheels were a formidable invention, 
and their uses are manifold (potters 
and millers did not abandon them, 
even when Cartwrights were eclipsed). 
But camels may work better in some 
circumstances. Wheels, like wings, 
fins, and brains, are exquisite devices 
for certain purposes, not signs of in- 
trinsic superiority. 
The haughty camel may provide 
enough embarrassment for any mod- 
ern Ezekiel, yet this column might 
seem to represent still another blot 
on the wheel’s reputation (though it 
does not). For I wish to pose another 
question that seems to limit the wheel. 
So much of human technology arose 
by re-creating the good designs of or- 
ganisms. If art mirrors nature and if 
wheels are so successful an invention, 
why do animals walk, fly, swim, leap, 
slither, and creep, but never roll (at 
least not on wheels)? It is bad enough 
that wheels, as human artifacts, are 
not always superior to nature’s handi- 
work. Why has nature, so multifarious 
in her ways, shunned the wheel as 
well? Are wheels a poor or rarely ef- 
ficient way to make progress after all? 
In this case, however, the limit lies 
with animals, not with the efficiency 
of wheels. A vulgarization of evolu- 
tion, presented in many popular ac- 
counts, casts natural selection as a 
perfecting principle, so accurate in its 
operation, so unconstrained in its ac- 
tion, that animals come to embody 
a set of engineering blueprints for op- 
timal form. Instead of replacing the 
older “argument from design” — the 
notion that God’s existence can be 
proved by the harmonies of nature 
and the clever construction of organ- 
isms — natural selection slips into 
God’s old role as perfecting principle. 
But the proof that evolution, and 
not the fiat of a rational agent, has 
built organisms lies in the imperfec- 
tions that record a history of descent 
and refute creation from nothing. Ani- 
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