It is believed that the first bicycle was created in 1817 by the German inventor Karl Drez, but even his vehicle had little resemblance to the current two-wheeled "iron horses". Now imagine the amazement of an Indian who recently noticed in the 2000-year-old Panchavarnaswami temple an image of a rider on a modern bicycle! According to the author of the find, he found a picture carved in stone in a dark corner of the farthest part of the temple. It is surprising that no one has noticed this strange artifact before, Praveen Mohan is surprised, perhaps the fault is that the locals are not too educated and do not understand how unusual it is.
However, given other "inappropriate" artifacts from antiquity, this is not so surprising. For example, we recently wrote about an antique statue in the American Museum depicting a man with a laptop. And although skeptics easily explained the appearance of that "gadget" many centuries ago logically, comparing it with a book, a box and so on, a stone bicycle, I think, will be more difficult for them to "fit" into objects generally accepted in antiquity …