I find it extremely hard to believe that ie South american cultures which had cities before this year didn't have wheels on some form of cart in their repertoire.
Maybe this is true if we limit scope on Europe and Middle east.
One thing about the invention of the wheel: in many places wheels are not very cost-effective without the addition of steam shovels and dynamite, since the topography doesn't engender itself to roads. This is especially true for early Bronze age: wheels have to be quite precise in order to gain mechanical advantage, which is a lot of manual labor. In particular the environment let Carpathians get away with "crappy" wheel technology:
> “Our findings also demonstrate the critical role that environmental factors played in the creation of wheeled technology,” the authors said in the paper. “The unique features of the mine environment accentuated the advantages of the wheelset over its predecessor while negating its most significant disadvantage: the inability to turn.”
In many places the roller prototype wouldn't cut it, so the village/etc wouldn't further develop the technology into a proper wheel. South American miners were probably better off with llamas.
