I was asked to repost this over here, after I stumbled onto an ongoing discussion about the current lateness of chariotry and the wheel:
The wheel was probably invented many times around the world. While it may have done in some cultures, there's no reason why potter's wheels would have to come first. The only universal pre-requisite for building wheels would be an appropriate level of wood working, and I suspect, rollers.
Rollers were used in the construction of such wonders as Stonehenge, and the Moai statues. Rolling mighty blocks of stone along on top of round tree trunks allowed those blocks to take journeys that seem amazing even today.
C2C already has plenty of techs, but perhaps if the wheel and chariots are having problems in the current scheme of things, Rollers might help to make the route to the wheel a little easier. It could also be a pre-req for Megalith Contruction, Stone Henge, Pyramids and similar early wonders.
The placing of the wheel at the moment is probably very late, historically. Alternatively, the current wheel tech could be renamed to the spoked wheel, which was a significant advance on the solid wheel technology that was developed much earlier, in the late neolithic.
Throwing out a shakey suggested layout:
Rollers: Pre-req Wood-working and Leads to Megalith Construction and the Solid Wheel. (Alternatively, to keep things less cluttered, rollers could simply be considered to be part of Megalith Construction, as you certainly weren't building many megalith without them.)
The (Solid) Wheel: Pre-req: Rollers, Carpentry, Animal Husbandry (as oxen are quite sufficient for cart pulling) Allows (probably tweaked down) "Early Chariot" (and perhaps some adapted cultural ones) with horse/camel domestication. Leads to Pottery (For Potter's Wheel purposes). Solid wheeled chariots were heavier and slower than spoked wheel ones, but they still served as the ultimate war machine of their time.
The Spoked Wheel : Where the wheel currently is, with Pre-Req Pottery. Which is still a bit strange and later than it ought to be. Allows the rest of the chariots.
Here's an example of a solid wheeled chariot from before the invention of the spoked wheel with a nice 5000 year old picture that might be suitable for the solid wheel tech.
http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/tombs/explore/w_char2.html From that page " Chariots were used in Mesopotamia from before 3000 B.C. The earliest chariots had either two or four solid wheels. Chariots with spoked wheels were invented about 1900 B.C. Early Sumerian chariots were pulled by donkeys. The charioteer steered the chariot using reins which went through a ring carried on the donkey's back and attached to rings in their noses. "
