BY KOREY BECKETT �" ON JUN 01ST IN ENTERTAINMENT
You can pick your friends and what college you get to play sports for when you’re an athlete, but there are a couple of things you can’t choose. You certainly can’t pick who your parents are, and those parents are able to give you a weird name that sticks with you for your entire life.

If it’s your first name that’s weird, you can blame your parents. If it’s your last name that’s goofy, then you can blame your parents’ luck. If it’s a combination of the two, you can blame your parents for acting like children.

There have been some very unique names that have come through the sporting world, and many of them have made us giggle and crack jokes almost non-stop. If you want to relive some of the strangest names in sports history, you’re in luck. Just make sure to get your mind back in the gutter before diving into this list, because it’s a little childish.

So who are the athletes that have had the most unfortunate names in sports history? We found 20 that stood above the rest, with some of them still active in their sport today. From NASCAR and the WNBA to the NFL and MLB, pretty much every sport is covered. Here are the 20 weirdest names in sports history.

20 Jordin Tootoo

Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports
19 Jim Bob Cooter

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18 DeWanna Bonner

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
17 Fair Hooker

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16 Steve Sharts

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15 Boof Bonser

via nytimes.com
14 D’Brickashaw Ferguson

Rich Barnes-USA TODAY Sports
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13 Longar Longar

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12 Yourhighness Morgan

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11 World B. Free

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10 God Shammgod

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9 Misty Hyman

via David Longstreath/AP
8 Dick Butkus

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7 Metta World Peace

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6 Johnny Dickshot

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5 Rusty Kuntz

Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports
4 God’sgift Achiuwa

Anthony Gruppuso-USA TODAY Sports
3 Milton Bradley

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2 Chubby Cox

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1 Dick Trickle

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Dick Trickle had the hands down oddest name in all of sports when he was participating in NASCAR. As a short track racer, Trickle was one of the best, and dominated the state of Wisconsin. When it came to the big boys league of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, though, Trickle could never win the big one. Despite starting in over 300 races in the span of a quarter century, Trickle not only never won a race, but his best finish was third. Trickle with 15 trips to the top five. Trickle tragically took his own life in May of 2013 in North Carolina.

Telegraph Sport reveals the explanation for some of the most curious club names in the sport �" including Swiss club Young Boys

Young Boys of Bern
One of Switzerland's oldest clubs, and certainly the most amusingly named (even more than Grasshoppers Zurich). Young Boys were founded in 1897 after four university students put on a game of football against Basel Old Boys Association. Rather than Old Boys, they opted to christen themselves Young Boys - and just to compound the silliness, they duly started playing their games at the Wankdorf Stadium. Enough said.

Semen Padang
One of the top teams in Indonesia (playing in red). And what a delightful name. Named after the place they are from, Padang, and their erstwhile sponsor, who were the country’s largest cement producer. Also sounds like the worst possible sort of takeaway curry.

Deportivo Wanka
The team is based in Huancayo in the Peruvian Andes, leading to the popular fan chant “Andes where we can see them, you Wankas”. They are named in honour of the indigenous Wankas people that used to live in the area. They were in the first division until 2004. In that season, the struggling Wankas moved their home stadium to Cerro de Pasco, which is at an altitude of 4,380m (13,973ft) above sea level. In a sort of maxi version of the Luton plastic pitch, it was hoped that altitude sickness and a lack of oxygen would be a big handicap for visiting sides. Sadly, the Wankas were relegated anyway.

Botswana Meat Commission
The Southern African country is well-known for its beef exports but who cares about that, because it is also known as a world leader in comedy football team names. Botswana Meat Commission, who were also briefly a prog rock group, play their top-flight football in Lobatse and take their place in a splendid football pyramid that also features Golden Bush and Naughty Boys.
Fotballaget Fart
Based in Vang, in the North of Norway, the men’s team of Fotballaget Fart yo-yo between the country’s third and fourth division, although the women’s team is a perennial fixture in the top flight. The team’s name means “football team speed” in, well, Norwegian, obviously. In 2014, a bloke called Erling Andreassen died aged 91 and left his entire estate to Fart; it was worth around half a million quid. Not to be sniffed at.
Insurance Management Bears
Almost certainly the most exciting club in the Bahamas, the Insurance Management Bears were set up by Bahamas FA President Anton Sealey in 1996 after he got a grant from the company for whom he worked. No flies on Anton: the Bears then won the National Championship six times out of the seven it was contested. Subject of the legendary sports flick Bad News Bears and the follow-up The Value of Your Investment May Go Down As Well As Up Bears.
The Strongest
Top name, top club … and a wealth of top nicknames including Tigre, El Derribador de Campeones, Gualdinegro and El Decano. Just seems greedy: as if The Strongest wasn’t already brilliant. Anyhow, they play in La Paz, Bolivia. In Bolivia’s 1932-1935 war with Paraguay, players and staff of the club made up a division of the army and did so well that the Batalla de Cañada Strongest was named after them. This makes them the only football club in the world to have a battle named after them, apart from Atletico Battle of the Bulge.

Name game: The Strongest's Rodrigo Ramallo on the attack (ALAMY)
Hearts of Oak
They come from Ghana, they play in Accra, they are the country’s oldest still-existent club, and as if the club name was not cool enough, they’re also known as Phobia (and have an ace kit: the red one, below).

Hearts on sleeve: The Ghanaian club's defenders close down an attacker (AFP)
Dinamo Bender
Playing their football in the impossibly glamorous surrounds of the Belarus second tier, the club representing the town of Bender has had several incarnations in a bid to make their name as funny as possible. Until 1958, they were Burevestnik Bender. In 1959, they tried Lokomotiv Bender. 1960 was the start of a 13-year stretch as Nistrul Bender, and then a 13-year period as Pishevik Bender. Spells as Tighina Bender and Tighina-Apoel Bender followed before the club settled on the even more hilarious Клуб снят с чемпионата.
Kalamazoo Outrage
The founding fathers of US soccer declared in their constitution that all soccer clubs must consist of a silly place name followed by an outlandish noun, ideally abstract. Sadly, none of them seem to last very long. Among the teams that have ceased to be are Knoxville Impact, Milwaukee Rampage and Michigan Madness, but all bend the knee to Kalamazoo Outrage, whose light burned briefly but oh-so-brightly from 2007 to 2010.
Deportivo Morón
Legendary Argentinians. They may play in the third division but there is nothing third rate about their name. They play in the Buenos Aries suburb of Moron and their club emblem is a cock. Like a chicken, that is.

Today
in
Irish
History


March 24
1603 - James VI of Scotland comes to the throne of England, as James I, following the death of Elizabeth I on this date
1796 - The Insurrection Act imposes curfews, arms searches, and the death penalty for oath-taking
1866 - Birth in Co. Cork of light-heavyweight boxing champion, Jack McAuliffe
1909 - Death in Dublin of John Millington Synge. The plays of Irish peasant life on which his fame rests are written in the last six years of his life. In 1904, Synge, Yeats and Lady Gregory found the famous Abbey Theatre. Two Synge comedies, The Well of the Saints (1905) and The Playboy of the Western World (1907), are presented by the Abbey players. The latter play creates a furor of resentment among Irish patriots stung by Synge's bitter humor.
1945 - Birth of actor Patrick Malahide; born Patrick G. Duggan, to Irish parents living in England
1953 - Queen Mary dies at 86
1958 - Dawson Stelfox, architect and mountaineer, is born in Belfast
1968 - An Aer Lingus plane, the St. Phelim, crashes into the sea near Tuskar Rock, Co. Wexford, with the loss of all 61 passengers and crew
1972 - Stormont parliament and government are suspended and direct rule from London is introduced; William Whitelaw becomes Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
1995 - For the first time in 25 years, Britain halts all routine army patrols in Belfast
1998 - The Prison Service in Northern Ireland confirms that five Loyalist Volunteer Force prisoners are now on hunger strike at the Maze jail to protest a security crackdown following the savage murder of loyalist remand prisoner David Keys
1999 - Anti-blood sports groups call on Minister Silé de Valera to refuse to renew a licence to the country's last remaining stag hunt
2000 - Dubliners face traffic chaos as the bus drivers’ dispute threatens to escalate into an all out strike
2002 - Twenty-one whales are rescued after stranding themselves on a Kerry beach; with the other whales forming a circle around her, rescuers are thrilled to observe one of the whales giving birth minutes after being pulled back out to safety
2003 - Veteran actor Peter O’Toole is awarded an honorary Oscar for a career which has spanned more than 40 years.
2010 - President Mary McAleese pays tribute to fallen Irish at Gallipoli while on a state trip to Turkey in what is being seen as the first official recognition of the huge loss of Irish lives in the first World War.
Photo credit: The Great War

1. What type of creature is a Portuguese man-of-war?

2. How many atoms of oxygen are there in one molecule of water?

3. What is the more common name for Hansen's disease?

4. Which zodiac sign is also called the twins?

5. In which limb would you find the humerus, ulna and radius?

6. What is the only wild monkey now living in Europe?

7. Which gas is represented by the symbol o?

8. What name is given to a bird's entire covering of feathers?

9. Which metal has the chemical symbol Ag?

10. Who developed the theory of Relativity? 

11. In a bucket of pure water, which would be the heaviest in total - the hydrogen atoms or the oxygen atoms?

12. Which form of carbon is most likely to be found in a lead pencil?

13. How many of the planets in the solar system are bigger than earth?

14. Which unit is defined, as the heat required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree centigrade?

15. To where did the Royal Observatory move in 1990?

16. Who invented the ZX80 computer?

17. The sun's heat is derived from the fusion of hydrogen into which other element?

18. Which organ of the human body is affected by Bright's disease?

19. Which engineer constructed the Stockton and Darlington railway and provided its first locomotives?

20. Which scientist was charged with heresy in 1633 for his view that the earth orbits the sun?

ANSWERS

1. Jellyfish

2. 1

3. Leprosy

4. Gemini

5. Arm

6. Barbary ape

7. Oxygen

8. Plumage

9. Silver

10. Einstein

11. Oxygen

12. Graphite

13. 4

14. The Calorie

15. Cambridge

16. Sir Clive Sinclair

17. Helium

18. Kidneys

19. George Stephenson

20. Galileo

Scientists believe they have proven, once and for all, that the Yeti doesn't exist.
So if you were planning a trip to Nepal to try to find the abominable snowman, you might want to rethink your holiday plans.
Many people thought a race of prehistoric apes lived in the snowy wilderness of the Himalayas in Asia.
But a new study has concluded that all physical evidence suggests Yetis come from various types of bears.
Danish professor Dr Charlotte Lindqvist is the expert responsible for putting an end to a centuries-old myth that has been passed down by generations of people in Nepal.

"Our findings strongly suggest that the biological underpinnings of the Yeti legend can be found in local bears," says Charlotte, who works at New York's University of Buffalo.
Charlotte and her team looked at nine samples of historic Yeti evidence gathered by a crew making a film about the creature.
Bear
Image caption Experts say all evidence of Yeti life comes from various types of bear
But sadly (for the filmmakers) DNA tests proved they were looking at bits of old dead bears, casting more than a century of yeti sightings into serious doubt.
The Brits saw something monkeying around in the snow
The first official record of something out of the ordinary came in 1832 when the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal published a report from British trekker B. H. Hodgson.
He said he saw a creature covered in long, dark hair which he thought was an orangutan.
If that was the case, the orangutan would have been more than 3,700 miles from his Sumatra home and probably cold and confused.
Himalaya expedition
Image caption Explorers in the Himalayas reported Yeti sightings for more than 100 years
Later, the Germans took an interest
In 1925, photographer N. A. Tombazi recorded his experience with a Yeti, spotting a tall, naked figure tugging at rhododendron bushes at 15,000 feet (4,500m).
Shortly before the start World War Two, the Nazis took an interest in the Yeti, sending an expedition to Nepal to investigate.
But even then, more than 100 years ago, explorer Ernst Schäfer concluded the Yeti was just a bear.
Yeti footprint
Image caption This photo was taken in 1951 by Eric Shipton and sparked international interest in the Yeti
The Daily Mail even got involved
The national newspaper sent an expedition to Nepal in 1953.
They printed an article a year later about finding a Yeti scalp, but when an expert looked into their report, Professor Frederic Wood Jones concluded it was neither a scalp nor from an ape.
Reinhold Messner
Image caption Reinhold Messner says he met a Yeti but it was just a rare bear (which he killed)
Bear theories have been popular since the 80s
In 1986, Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner claimed that the mysterious creature was a species of endangered bear - either the Himalayan brown or the Tibetan blue - which can walk around on their back legs.
He says he killed a "Yeti" during an encounter in Nepal, which means one of these species became even more endangered after bumping into Reinhold.

Warning: Third part video may contain adverts
More recent expeditions also revealed little
Explorers and Yeti fans have continued until recently, but unsurprisingly, they've found absolutely nothing.
But even the new findings haven't deterred true believers, who think that the real Yeti is still out there.
"I think there is still a possibility that there are unknown species of higher primate which are still awaiting discovery in what used to be Soviet central Asia," Jonathan Downes, director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology, told the Guardian.

But she doesn't think they spotted a pre-historic animal.
"There aren't enough fish available for a large creature to be eating," she says.
"However, there is a possibility there might be some kind of eel or sturgeon which is causing the sightings, that's maybe grown bigger than they usually do.
"I think there's some kind of creature but possibly not a monster."
Hoax picture of the Loch Ness monster
Image caption This famous 1924 "photo" of the Loch Ness monster was revealed as a hoax by one of the people who staged it
A woman on her honeymoon in October spotted a creature moving in the water, while a group of friends holidaying in August spotted "something huge" in the water which apparently "arched out of the water".
There were three sightings in June, one in May and one in April which were all deemed "official" sightings.
Loch Ness
Image caption The myth of the Loch Ness Monster has captured the imagination for decades
These sightings, and many more, are recorded by Gary Campbell who assesses and logs sightings of the Loch Ness monster.
"This is the most we have had this century," he told The Express newspaper this week.
He says that his team was "50/50" on the photo taken by Dr Knight, but they decided to give her snap "the benefit of the doubt".
"In recent years the most sightings in a year we have had is 17 - and that was in 1996.
"Before that the 1960s and 1930s were the times that had most sightings - sometimes more than 20 in a year."
A 9m model of the Loch Ness Monster built in 1969 for a Sherlock Holmes movie was found almost 50 years after it sank in the loch last year.
Kongsberg Maritime's image of the lost Nessie model
Image caption A Kongsberg Maritime image of the lost Nessie model
Loch Ness expert Adrian Shine said the shape, measurements and location pointed to the object being the prop.
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Television had long been a dream of inventors; serious attempts to build a television system started over 100 years before even the name was invented. Up to the 1920s, television was still called by a variety of names including: Radiovision, Seeing by Wireless, Distant Electric Vision, Phototelegraphy, The Electric Telescope, Visual Listening, Telectroscopy, Hear-Seeing, Telephonoscope, Audiovision, Radio Movies, The Radio Kinema, Radioscope, Lustreer, Farscope, Optiphone, Mirascope.

By the time modern television became a reality, in the mid 1930s, there had already been over 50 serious proposals for television. The competition was truly international, with inventors and companies working in 11 different countries. Many of these pioneers had no success; a few however were able to produce silhouette pictures and were hailed as the 'inventors' of television within their own countries.

Thus, the French say both Belin and Barthelemy were the inventors of television; the Japanese believe it was Takayanagi; the Russians say Boris Rosing; the Germans either Nipkow or Karolus; the Hungarians von Mihaly; in the USA most people believe it was either Jenkins or Farnsworth; and in the UK we have the choice of Campbell-Swinton for the concept, or John Logie Baird for television's practical demonstration.

Although several pioneers had been working on the invention of television as far back as the 1850s, there were four key technologies that had to be developed before any form of television could become a possibility. These were:

a device to change light into an electric current
a device to change the electric current back into light
a scanning device to break the image up into small elements
an electronic amplifier to increase weak signals to a usable level
Once all of these inventions were in place, they would still need further development before a successful television system could be invented.

Karl Braun, Paul Nipkow and Lee DeForest
The first of the four key inventions happened in 1873 when a telegraph operator discovered that light affected the electrical resistance of selenium. It was soon realised that it was possible to change light into electricity using a selenium photocell.

The next key invention came in 1884 when Paul Nipkow in Germany invented a disc with a single spiral of holes in it as a method of mechanical scanning for television. Although he was never able to build a working system, the Nipkow disc was later used by several TV pioneers as the basis for their own television systems.

What was needed now was some device to turn an electric current back into light. A conventional light bulb was unsuitable because it could not vary its brightness fast enough to produce a TV image. The Neon lamp was developed by Georges Claude in France in 1902 and was used by many early television pioneers.

However, the most important breakthrough had happened earlier (in 1897) when Karl Braun in Germany invented the cathode-ray tube. The 'Braun tube', although unusable for television at the time, would become the most important television display device for the next century.

The last invention in the chain came in 1906 when Lee de Forest in the USA invented the Amplion (amplifying triode valve), making it possible to amplify the weak video signals created by selenium photocells. A working amplifier took him another six years to develop, and nearly ten years would pass before this amplifier was improved enough for television.

So by 1922 all the key elements were in place for the invention of television, and inventors around the world sensed that success was within reach. Many of them had well equipped laboratories and sufficient funds for staff and equipment. It is therefore surprising that success was snatched by a most unlikely figure.

Ancient Britain was a peninsula until a tsunami flooded its land-links to Europe some 8,000 years ago. Did that wave help shape the national character?
The coastline and landscape of what would become modern Britain began to emerge at the end of the last Ice Age around 10,000 years ago.
What had been a cold, dry tundra on the north-western edge of Europe grew warmer and wetter as the ice caps melted. The Irish Sea, North Sea and the Channel were all dry land, albeit land slowly being submerged as sea levels rose.
But it wasn't until 6,100BC that Britain broke free of mainland Europe for good, during the Mesolithic period - the Middle Stone Age.
Find out more

Neil Oliver's A History Of Ancient Britain continues on BBC Two, 16 February, 2100 GMT
Watch episode one on iPlayer
Clickable timeline of British history
It is thought that landslides in Norway - the Storegga Slides - triggered one of the biggest tsunamis ever recorded on Earth when a landlocked sea in the Norwegian trench burst its banks.
The water struck the north-east of Britain with such force it travelled 25 miles (40km) inland, turning low-lying plains into what is now the North Sea, and marshlands to the south into the Channel. Britain became an island nation.
At the time it was home to a fragile and scattered population of about 5,000 hunter-gatherers, descended from the early humans who had followed migrating herds of mammoth and reindeer onto the jagged peninsula.
Ancient signs of French connection

Fossilised trees in Bray, Co Wicklow
"In Bray, on the east coast of Ireland, there are fossilised trees on the beach, lying where they first grew 8,000 years ago.
"There are drowned forests off Dorset, Wales and the Isle of Wight. That's because back then, the Irish Sea, North Sea and the Channel were all dry land.
"When the great melt came, and the seas gradually rose by 300 feet, we were cut off from mainland Europe for good."
From 2008's British Isles: A Natural History
Watch Alan Titchmarsh explore the forest
Ancient sites, and related activities
"The waves would have been maybe as much as 10m (33ft) high," says geologist David Smith, of Oxford University. "Anyone standing out on the mud flats at that time would have been dismembered. The speed [of the water] was just so great."
At Montrose, on the north-east coast of Scotland, Smith has uncovered signs of this long-ago natural disaster. A layer of ancient sand runs through what should be banks of continuous clay - sand washed inland by the inundation.
Relics of these pre-island times are being recovered from under the sea off the Isle of Wight, dating from when the Solent was dry land.
Grooved timbers preserved by the saltwater are thought to be the remains of 8,000-year-old log boats, and point to the site once being a sizable boat-building yard, says Garry Momber, of the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology (see video clip below).
The tsunami was a watershed in our history, says archaeologist Neil Oliver, presenter of BBC Two's A History of Ancient Britain.
"The people living in the land that would become Britain had become different. They'd been made different. And at the same time, they'd been made a wee bit special as well."

"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church"--Tertullian

In the first few centuries, Christianity grew quickly. By AD100, it had become mostly Gentile and had begun to break from its Jewish origins. By 200, the faith had permeated most regions of the Roman Empire, though Christians were mostly in the larger urban areas (Gaul, Lyons, Carthage, Rome). By 325, an estimated 7 million were Christians with as many as 2 million killed for the faith. This growth can be attributed to the new faith's meeting needs across cultural barriers, its giving general meaning to life for many, the overall transformation of those lives, the social concerns of Christians during the plagues for the sick and the poor, and the power of its doctrine. News of the resurrection of Christ produced great loyalty among followers. Christian martyrdom also, ironically,  created vast interest in and respect for the Christians and increased their numbers.

Reasons for Persecutions

Sometimes local, socio-economic conflict with Jewish circles created persecution in the first century.
After A.D. 50, Christianity was put on the imperial list of "illicit" sects, and after A.D. 64, it was declared illegal, though this did not always result in continual persecution. Christians had many periods of nominal and benign neglect.
Christian refusal to worship or honor other gods was a source of great contention.
Before A.D. 300, Christians were often from the urban poor and lower classes; thus, they were easy prey for those seeking power or goods. However, a sizeable group of educated, middle-class Christians also existed.
Christians were accused of being atheists because of their denial of the other gods and refusal of emperor worship. Thus, they were accused of treason to the state.
They were accused of "secret immoral worship" practices, including cannibalism, incest, and beastalism.
They were also charged as haters of humanity and being irrational in their beliefs. For many provincial governors, Christians were considered social radicals, rather than being persecuted specifically for their faith only.
Periods of Persecution

Early Jewish Persecution (1st century)--cf. I Peter, Hebrews, and James.
Early Sporadic persecutions--Nero (A.D. 64); Domitian (A.D. 81-96); and Trajan (A.D. 108)
Marcus Aurelius (A.D.162)--The perseuction of the Christians at Lyon is the most famous incident during his period.
Severus (A.D. 192)--Not everone agress that Severus himself was responsible for Christian persecutions. The most well-known inicdents took places in North Africa, such as the executions of Perpetua and Felicity.
Maximus (A.D. 235)--Again, it is debated whether Maximus himself authorized these or whether they were the decisions of local governors. Several well-known Christian senators ad leaders were executed during this time, while others such as Hippolytus were sent into exile.
Decius (A.D. 249-251) tried to force apostasy rather than create martyrdom. He created the libellus, a stamp of state approval given after swearing fealty to Caesar.
Valerian (A.D. 253-260) singled out bishops, forcing them to recant or die. He also kept Christians from meeting in cemeteries. This period has been called the Great Persecution.
Diocletian (A.D. 285-305)/ "Age of the Martyrs"  known for evicting Christians from their homes, the army, and jobs. Christian churches and homes are burnt, copies of scriptures burnt, and Christian civil servants persecuted.
Responses to Persecution

The Apostates: Many left the faith.
The Lapsed: Some denied under torture but returned amidst opposition.
The Confessors: Those who endured persecution and lived to tell about it.
The Martyrs: Those who witnessed unto death.
Black Market: Some in wealthier families purchased the libellus on the black market.
**The question of how the lapsed were to be restored to the Church was an important one with some demanding harsh penance and others wanting to extend the forgiveness and love of God. We will discuss this in more detail later in the semester.

"All manner of thing shall be well/ When the tongues of flame are in-folded/ Into the crowned knot of fire/ And the fire and the rose are one." -- T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Historically speaking, wheels are a much newer development than you might expect. The oldest recovered specimen is a wooden Slovenian model built sometime between 5,100 and 5,350 years ago. By then, humans had already been practicing agriculture for several millennia�"in fact, farming may date all the way back to 12,000 BCE. Canoes and animal domestication also vastly predate the wheel.

Why did this invention take so long to get rolling? Well, from a vehicular standpoint, spinning wheels are basically useless unless they’re attached to a secure shaft of some sort. It was only after mankind finally built such stabilizers�"which we now call “axles”�"that the wheel began realizing its full potential. “The wheel-and-axle concept was the real stroke of brilliance,” says anthropologist David Anthony. That idea required extreme finesse, which only metal tools could adequately provide. However, these didn’t become widespread until around 4000 BCE, hence our delay.

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Slovenia’s aforementioned artifact emerged from the Ljubljana Marshes back in 2002. With a 27.5-inch radius, it was presumably one of two wheels affixed to an ancient pushcart. Yet, impressive as the relic is, a Polish pot�"made anywhere from 5650 to 5385 years ago�"upstages it. Sketched upon this container is a crude wagon, thought by many to be the first artistic depiction of wheeled transportation.

Back in those days, Northern Europe was populated by what archaeologists call “The Funnel Beaker Culture.” Sophisticated agriculturalists, these people just might have been the first to construct true wheels. Other candidates include the Mesopotamians and the largely-sedentary Cucuteni-Tripolye culture. That latter group built small, four-wheeled toys in modern-day Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania.

Ultimately, it’s possible that many groups independently invented the wheel. Ancient Mesoamericans, for example, also produced little wheeled figurines despite having no known contact with their old world counterparts. However, the western hemisphere suffered from a near-total lack of domestication-ready animals capable of pulling carts. Thus, full-sized wheels don’t appear to have become popular on either American continent before overseas invaders started showing up.