The flood plains of Mesopotamia, where the wheel seems to have been invented, is pretty flat. You didn't really need engineered roads, just a treeless path from a to b.
Likewise, the rolling plains of western central asia, another place with evidence of very early wheel usage, are flat and treeless - no roads needed, and the sheep raising horse nomads that inhabited the area from 1000 BC on definitely had wheeled carts but no roads.
On the other extreme, as I briefly mention, the Andes are not a place where anyone with sense would spend time working on inventing wheels for transport. People who wonder why the Incas didn't invent the wheel have never seen photos of the landscape in Peru.
Once it was invented, the wheel spread throughout Eurasia really, really fast, and to places that definitely did not yet have governments with the ability to build a road network. Being able to haul large loads with just a few oxen was the killer app of 5,000 years ago.
no subject
Likewise, the rolling plains of western central asia, another place with evidence of very early wheel usage, are flat and treeless - no roads needed, and the sheep raising horse nomads that inhabited the area from 1000 BC on definitely had wheeled carts but no roads.
On the other extreme, as I briefly mention, the Andes are not a place where anyone with sense would spend time working on inventing wheels for transport. People who wonder why the Incas didn't invent the wheel have never seen photos of the landscape in Peru.
Once it was invented, the wheel spread throughout Eurasia really, really fast, and to places that definitely did not yet have governments with the ability to build a road network. Being able to haul large loads with just a few oxen was the killer app of 5,000 years ago.