The wheel was developed awfully recently in human civilisation, given how critical it has proven to be since. Modern homo sapiens is about 130,000 years old, yet humans only invented the wheel in the Bronze Age, 5,500 years ago. That means 96% of human existence has been without the wheel.
It seems the wheel was so late in being invented because it was only useful in the context of a wheel and axle system, which while conceptually simple, is hard to get right:
To make a fixed axle with revolving wheels, Anthony explained, the ends of the axle had to be nearly perfectly smooth and round, as did the holes in the center of the wheels; otherwise, there would be too much friction for the wheels to turn. Furthermore, the axles had to fit snugly inside the wheels’ holes, but not too snugly — they had to be free to rotate.
And
The success of the whole structure was extremely sensitive to the size of the axle. While a narrow one would reduce the amount of friction, it would also be too weak to support a load. Meanwhile, a thick axle would hugely increase the amount of friction.