Did you know that it wasn’t until the 1920s that an astronomer, Cecilia Payne, went against prevailing orthodoxy and said that stars do not have the same elemental composition as earth? At first she was ignored of course, partly because of being a female and partly just the normal resistance to anything new. But eventually the new theory stuck because the evidence was overwhelming. Of course anyone could have looked at the sun and seen a very discernible difference. The earth is not glowing hot.
Sometimes the truth is staring us right in the face but we are too busy trying to fit into the prevailing paradigm to see it. After the authenticity becomes apparent, everyone says: “Well, of course–what else could it be?”
The wheel is only 5,000 years old though this particular species has been here for 130,000 years–and this species has always been very smart. Why did it take so long to “see” the wheel? The paradigm worked fine without it–it wasn’t needed. When it became needed, it was invented.