Monday, January 14, 2019

Inventing the Wall

Last week, in one of his minor episodes of stone-cold ignorance, President Spanklyn T. Borderline told us that the wheel is older than the wall. The wheel is old. It was invented by someone throwing clay pots in the region of Sumer (Iraq) about 6,000 years ago.  A few hundred years later, someone attached pottery wheels and an axle to a box, inventing the wagon.

But every student of the Bible knows that walls go back at least to the city of Jericho; that's about 9,000 years ago. The Torah tells us that the walls of Jericho collapsed and then an attack led by a fellow named Joshua killed nearly every man, woman and child who lived there. 

Many college graduates have heard that Genocidal Joshua fit the battle of Jericho.


My interest is in the person who invented the wheel. This potter or  the potter's descendants should get a Nobel Prize, but of course the inventor will remain nameless. No fame for the inventor of the bow and arrow or the tamer of the horse (who evolved from the eater of the horse). Who built the first fireplace? 

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