Most things we call "amazing" really aren't amazing.

For example, we might call a total solar eclipse "amazing", but it isn't, really.  It's just a natural event and happens throughout the universe.

We might call a musician or singer's performance "amazing", but I doubt they'd categorize it as such.  When I get hot, I can play my 12-string guitar blindingly fast, but if someone said, "Wow, that's amazing!", I'd respond with, "No, I was just playing fast."

Would you call this "amazing"?

I bet that if you tracked her down and told her "That was amazing!", she'd respond with something like, "What, that old thing?  I've been doing it since I was five!"  In interviews, people who do "amazing" things almost inevitably downplay them almost to the point of being 'routine'.

But one thing I really do find amazing is that the wheel had to be "invented."
 

Consider a cave man tribe.  Now, while there's no question that the children of our cave men forebears grew up quicker than probably any children in history, from a pragmatic point of view there was still an age where they were still just small children, and allowed to play and goof around as children are wont to do.

Surely, down by the stream, was an endless variety of rocks.  Surely, in all those round, flat rocks, there must have been some with holes punched through the middle by some quirk of erosion.  Obviously, these rocks would be highly prized because they're so unusual, and thus collected.

As such, you would think that surely, at some point in time, someone would have stuck a small twig through the holes of two of these rocks...

and rolled it along the ground.

And thus the wheel was never "invented"; it just came about the same way fire-making and housing and early food-gathering techniques all came about, as a natural part of man's evolution.

At least, that's what you'd think.

And yet entire civilizations rose and fell without anyone ever inventing the wheel.  The Egyptians of the great pyramids?

No wheel.

They rolled the massive stones along on logs — and you'd think that, at some point in time, an end would have broken off a log, maybe a knothole right in the middle popped out, someone pokes a stick through the middle, rolls it along the ground and presto, the wheel is invented.

Nope.
 

The most well-researched book I've ever read was "Aztec" by Gary Jennings.  The detail was just stunning.

But second on the list would have to be Wilbur Smith's Egyptian novels, "River God", "The Seventh Scroll", and "Warlock."  Again, the detail surrounding the lives of the characters really immersed you in the books and forced a deep respect for the author and the research he must have done.  As such, I'm taking his historical fiction pretty much at face value.  While the characters are fictional, their surroundings and events and, to a great degree, what they said in the book was probably fairly close to reality.

The main character in "River God" is the head slave in the imperial palace.  He's one of those do-all kind of guys; physician, astronomer, architect, inventor, etc.  But, as exciting as his long life is, there is one moment that surpasses all others.

The enemy has invaded and their war chariots, with long razor-sharp blades coming out of the hubs, are slicing the Egyptian legions to ribbons.  The horses and riders are both covered with armor and are almost impervious to the Egyptians' weak spears and arrows.  This devastating new weapon panics the remaining Egyptian solders and the battle, and finally the kingdom, is lost.

On a hill high above the battle the slave takes all of this in, and what has him reeling with shock and despair isn't the fearsome war machine before him.

It's the wheel the machine is mounted on.

I admit, it must have been stupefying to the first Egyptians who saw them.  After veritably a lifetime of rational, scientific endeavor like the hero in the book; to suddenly see something so obvious must have come as the most mind-altering, ego-shattering blow humanly imaginable.

Not to mention civilization-changing.

The Egyptians had also never seen horses or recursive bows (which far outshoot regular bows), so it was quite the learning experience all around.  The book goes on to record how they embraced the new technologies, improved them, and eventually took their kingdom back.
 

There really is nothing else quite like the invention of the wheel.  The only thing I can think of that comes close is the invention of perspective in painting.  Like the wheel, it seems kind of obvious that parallel lines meet in the same place on the horizon, so you'd think even early cave man drawings would have some semblance of perspective, but, like the wheel, entire civilizations rose and fell without anyone discovering how to draw in perspective.

But that's just art, whereas the wheel was integral to mankind.  In the case of the mighty Egyptians, the greatest architects the old world had ever known, it literally had to fall right into their (now-bloody) laps. 

And one has to wonder how the average slob living out in the countryside viewed the wheel the first time a cart was rolled into town.

"What is that strange thing??"

"It's a wheel."

"It's amazing!"

"What, this old thing?  I've had it since I was five!"