the Wheel and Dating PIE

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/26/00 8:53:39 AM, Hans J Holm wrote:

<<of cause the word is older: cf hebrew golgatha< gol-gol-tha 'place of
scull', where the scull is named after its rounded form, or cf. the
Ngoro-ngoro-crater in eastern Africa, where of cause n- is the Swaheli
class-prefix, and again we get the word for 'circle' < 'round-round'.
But: the use for wheel seems to be specific IE.>>

And that is an oddity in itself, isn't it.  Everything from skulls to craters
to a circle of elders (in Homer) - one would think that the application of
the circle/round word to the wheel would be very direct and expected in other
languages.

If in fact the wheel did first come out of northern Europe (not advocating,
just hypothesizing) then how would that word have passed into non-IE Near
East languages?  Would borrowing from IE explain the glaring non-use of
native round/circle words in those non-IE languages?

Regards,
Steve Long