Copper miners working near the Carpathian mountains in eastern Europe may have been the first engineers to invent the wheel around 6,000 years ago, a new theory says. Archaeological evidence places the earliest use and widespread adoption of wheels and wheeled vehicles during the Copper Age between 5000 and 3000BC across Europe, North Africa and Asia. But the exact origin and the circumstances under which one of humanity’s most revolutionary inventions came about are shrouded in mystery.