urartu sailing?

Did first controlled sailing occur at these lakes for reliable trade?
[Urartu/Ararat empire that became Armenia, parts of Iran/Georgia/Turkey.
Khalde = Chaldean?, Van = Levant = Lebanon, Van - Venetia/Phoenecia/Venice/Veneti?]

The wheel is found earliest here and Poland, from dragged triangular travoix to pulled sleds to sleds with pole rollers to detachable disc wheels (droga (drag/draw)/traga to wagon/tobagon/truck/(Thai) tuktuk)) with mast-pole axle. See bottom. Only areas with snow and ice would develop this method of trade locomotion. Africa had hoops but no wheels. Controlled sailing = controlled mast 360 degrees = axle on cart.

Phoenicians originally from these "high" seas, first sailers to learn to sail against the wind?
The seas of Armenia, Lake Van, Lake Sevan, Lake Urmia

This area was extraordinarily rich in trade (eg. mined flint, lapis lazuli) with Sumeria, Med. /Red/Black/Caspian seacoasts, Tigris-Euphrates rivers, early middle east towns. Bible refers to Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, may link to Ur (city) of Urartu and the local god Khaldi. Did controlled sailing first begin in these mountain brackish lakes for ferrying products across? Nile sailboats furled sails when the current brought them downstream and unfurled sails when the winds brought them upstream, so no advantage to have tack-ability. The oceans were too rough for early sailboats. Rivers, wetlands and ponds required paddling or punt poling. Legend of Noahs' ark landing at Mount Ararat may have come from ancient Urartu lake original controlled sailing. Perhaps these seas had mountain passes which brought consistent breezes, where control of sail power was rewarded and long distance paddling was hard work due to low oxygen level?

[The Kingdom of Armenia (or Greater Armenia) was an independent kingdom from 190 BC to AD 387 and a client state of the Roman and Persian empires until 428, stretching from the Caspian to Mediterranean seas.

The predecessor of the kingdom was the Satrapy of Armenia Armenia
("Armina" in Old Persian, "Harminuya" in Elamite, and "Urartu" in the Bablylonian parts of Behistun Inscription
The Behistun Inscription is a multi-lingual inscription authored by Darius the Great, king of the Persian Empire, the successor state of the Median Empire, ruling over significant portions of what would become Greater Iran

The Orontid Dynasty was the first known Armenian dynasty and the successor state to the Kingdom of Ararat... (with Macedonian influence). ]

Tushpa, the capital of Urartu, was located near the shores of Lake Van, on the site of what became medieval Van's castle, west of present-day Van city.

Lake Van was the centre of the Armenian kingdom of Ararat from about 1000 BC, afterwards of the Satrapy of Armina, Kingdom of Greater Armenia, and the Armenian Kingdom of Vaspurakan.

Along with Lake Sevan in today's Armenia and Lake Urmia in today's Iran, Van was one of the three great lakes of the Armenian Kingdom, referred to as the seas of Armenia (in ancient Assyrian sources: "tâmtu ša mât Nairi" (Upper Sea of Nairi), the Lower Sea being Lake Urmia).

Armenian: Lake Sevan = Sevana Lich

the etymology of word "Sevan" was found in Teyseba (the cuneiform inscription by Rusa I (730—714 B.C.)). the etymology of "Sevan" is similar to Yerevan's etymology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerevan
it is likely that the city's name is derived from the Urartian military fortress of Erebuni (Էրեբունի), which was founded on the territory of modern-day Yerevan in 782 BC by Argishti I.[6] As elements of the Urartian language blended with that of the Armenian one, the name eventually evolved into Yerevan (Erebuni = Erevani = Erevan = Yerevan). Scholar Margarit Israelyan notes these changes when comparing inscriptions found on two cuneiform tablets at Erebuni:
The transcription of the second cuneiform bu [original emphasis] of the word was very essential in our interpretation as it is the Urartaean b that has been shifted to the Armenian v (b > v). The original writing of the inscription read «er-bu-ni»; therefore the prominent Armenianologist-orientalist Prof. G. A. Ghapantsian justly objected, remarking that the Urartu b changed to v at the beginning of the word (Biani > Van) or between two vowels (ebani > avan, Zabaha > Javakhk)....In other words b was placed between two vowels. The true pronunciation of the fortress-city was apparently Erebuny.[7]

So Van and Sevan were perhaps eban and seban, compare to Lebanon and venice...remarkably similar!

Lake Urmia is named after the provincial capital city of Urmia, originally a Syriac name meaning city (ur) of water (mia). OR The name Urmia is a compound. The first element--"ur" standing for 'city', is Sumerian. Ur per se, was a principal Sumerian city. The second element, "mia" is Aramaic Syriac meaning "water." Hence Urmia

In the ancient times, the west bank of Urmia lake was called Gilzan (gol-van?), and in the ninth century B.C. an independent government ruled there which later joined the Urartu or Mana empire;

the western part of the Urmia Lake has been a center of attention of the prehistoric nations, the evidence of which are the numerous ancient hills in the area, such as Gouy Tapeh, 6 kilometers southeast of the lake which competes with the oldest hills of Mesopotamia, Asia the Minor, and the Iranian Plateau. Many old Islamic historians have acknowledged Urmia as the birthplace of prophet Zoroaster.

The Catholic Encyclopedia mentions Urmia as the seat of a Chaldean diocese.[7]

Turkish: Lake Van = Van Golu

Wheel:
The earliest examples of wheeled vehicles were little more than sleds with 2 attached solid wheels, but this was an enormous improvement over dragging. Early examples of these wheeled vehicles were found within a region between Lake Van in eastern Asia Minor and Lake Urmia in northern Iran, an area no more than 1,200 mi. across. This evidence indicates that these wheeled vehicles emerged more than 5,000 years ago, during the final centuries of the 4th Millennium. The remains of later vehicles, both carts and wagons, often survive as nothing more than stains in the soil, such as those found in the royal tombs at Kish and Ur, in Mesopotamia. Evidence was found during the mid-1960s in the region between the Black and Caspian seas of the U.S.S.R. that disk-wheeled vehicles flourished during the Kura-Araxes culture, beginning about 3000 B.C. Here pottery models of vehicles with wellmarked, hubbed, disk wheels were found that were identical to the vehicles buried at a later date in Kish and Ur.

http://dev.laptop.org/~arael/preview/wikislice-en/wikislice-en.xol/articles/Wheel.htm

Spoked wheels (cart/chariot/car/(Malay) kereta) were later, for lightweight/speed (using goats and donkeys as much as oxen) rather than heavy loads.