Neolithic pull toys

"Neolithic" and "pull-toy" are not words you would expect to see used in the same sentence. Scribal Terror tonight featured the above image, with the explanation that it was part of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of neolithic Europe.

Intrigued, I then Googled "neolithic" and "pull-toy," and to my surprise found other examples. The book Following the Sun is online at Google Book Search; page 246 described Danish tribes contemporaneous with the Picts:

During the Neolithic period, agriculture and cattle herding became part of their livelihood in both Denmark and Scotland, and around 1000 B.C. the Danes began building large mound-graves, which have been the source of rich archeological troves. One of these artifacts was a bronze chariot found at Trundholm Bog in northwest Zealand, dated about 1400 B.C. The artifact resembles a child's pull toy. It is a wheeled horse...

In Contemplating the Ancients, online here, is this passage describing a rubbing of a stone relief from the Eastern Han dynasty (A.D. 25-220):

Scholars most frequently identify uninscribed scenes by the presence of the small child with the pull-toy, found on the stone from Jiaxiang (Shandong), where inscriptions identify both Confucius and Laozi.

As I was writing this, I seemed to remember a pull toy having been found in Tutankhamen's tomb; I was unable to confirm that, but the search did lead me to this page on ancient pull toys which alludes to 4000-year-old Egyptian pull toys.

This link depicts a Mesopotamian pull toy - a "hollow, baked, clay vessel with a ram's head" on wheels.

And finally, Precolumbianwheels.com (!) has pictures of dozens of wheeled toy dog figurines (including the one top above). I find this particularly interesting in view of the conventional wisdom that Native Americans in pre-contact North America had reportedly never invented the wheel.

Europe - China - Egypt - Mesopotamia - Mesoamerica. Who would ever have guessed that so many different early cultures would have created pull-toys for their children?