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[Bumber]

Personally I think scenario 2 is much more likely, as it requires 4 times as many words and invokes a creator god.

Urist's razor. (Urist doesn't shave.)

[Alev]

Yup, the FirstDwarves lived on fish and wrestled-to-death wildlife, cleaned and butchered in clay fisheries and clay butcher shops, drinking booze made from lair/cave-accessed plump helmets they cultivated and fermented in clay stills.

The problem with clay is the "the first kiln" paradox. A kiln can be used to gather clay which is firesafe, but requires firesafe material to build.

1) In prehistory, dwarves gathered clay for purposes other than firing. Later, when fired clay came into fashion, dwarves forgot about the ability to gather clay without a kiln.

2) Via some convoluted route, dwarves built a craftdwarf workshop out of non-firesafe material, such as wagon wood (there is no first wagon problem, there is no known route to construct wagons hence we must conclude they are simply created by Armok as needed). Eventually an inspired dwarf made a bone pick, the bone pick was used to dig some firesafe material, and then a kiln could be built (perhaps to create potash). Having built the kiln some dwarf had the idea to gather clay and burn it in the kiln.

Personally I think scenario 2 is much more likely, as it requires 4 times as many words and invokes a creator god.

Wait... wagons are never created, so they must be the incarnation of gods on the world! Yeah!

[MarcAFK]

What's with the steel thrones in the furnaces?

[ArKFallen]

Yup, the FirstDwarves lived on fish and wrestled-to-death wildlife, cleaned and butchered in clay fisheries and clay butcher shops, drinking booze made from lair/cave-accessed plump helmets they cultivated and fermented in clay stills.

The problem with clay is the "the first kiln" paradox. A kiln can be used to gather clay which is firesafe, but requires firesafe material to build.

1) In prehistory, dwarves gathered clay for purposes other than firing. Later, when fired clay came into fashion, dwarves forgot about the ability to gather clay without a kiln.

2) Via some convoluted route, dwarves built a craftdwarf workshop out of non-firesafe material, such as wagon wood (there is no first wagon problem, there is no known route to construct wagons hence we must conclude they are simply created by Armok as needed). Eventually an inspired dwarf made a bone pick, the bone pick was used to dig some firesafe material, and then a kiln could be built (perhaps to create potash). Having built the kiln some dwarf had the idea to gather clay and burn it in the kiln.

Personally I think scenario 2 is much more likely, as it requires 4 times as many words and invokes a creator god.

After stealing the secret of the location of wood from the elves (to be fair trees do appear to be large monstrosities especially for a dwarf first coming out of a cave) along with a few logs obtained by elven tree worship they created training axes. Once the elves saw what dwarves wrought and why they attempted to impose limits because dwarves "don't understand", limits were broken and dwarves pushed back into the caves, eventually nethercap is cut down, and they used the heat-impervious wood to do all the other bits.

What's with the steel thrones in the furnaces?

The Mountainhomes remember when forges were underground campfire dinners.

[Urist McVoyager]

Naw, considering Dwarves are subterranean, and some of those caves/lairs have tunnels in them leading down to the caverns, the early Dwarves probably lived in those caves. Back then, wagons were wild and would come underground, or be killed and hauled home by beasts that ate them. And the first Carpenters used wagon wood to build their shops, and the axes used to cut down the fungi of their home caverns. The war with elves came because the Dwarves needed to use the surface for travel, before the days of the pick.

The first artifact picks were weapons for killing elves. It was only tangentially discovered that they mined rocks just as well as Elf Skulls. They happened to have been made when Urist McVisionary invited an elf to his home, and took to a Fell mood to make the first ever Elfbone Pick.

[Dorf and Dumb]

Some of the fortresses have interesting architecture.  Reclaimed one over a volcano that had a spiral staircase continuing down through layer after layer of magma, emerging in a level of forges that was continually being inundated with evaporating lava.

[GavJ]

The wagon hypotheses don't make any more sense than clay. You can't kill wagons in the actual game, just like you can't gather clay without a kiln.

"Oh but come on, it's minor to just pretend that you could kill them." Sure, but that's no different than
"Oh but come on, it's minor to just pretend that you can gather clay anyway."

If you don't insist on strict possibility, then there are dozens of answers already.
If you DO insist on strict possibility, then there are still no answers that I've heard.

[FallenAngel]

The wagon hypotheses don't make any more sense than clay. You can't kill wagons in the actual game, just like you can't gather clay without a kiln.

"Oh but come on, it's minor to just pretend that you could kill them." Sure, but that's no different than
"Oh but come on, it's minor to just pretend that you can gather clay anyway."

If you don't insist on strict possibility, then there are dozens of answers already.
If you DO insist on strict possibility, then there are still no answers that I've heard.

It is assumed wagons were created at the beginning - before they were solely used by merchants, they were pulled around by the now-extinct Cave Horse in a symbiotic relationship. The wagon grew cave moss (it's made of a wood-like material, seriously), and the Cave Horses turned around on their long, rope-like tails to eat said moss without releasing the wagon.
Dwarves were the first to "tame" wagons. Due to their unusual nature, said taming was actually taming of the Cave Horses. After successful taming of the wagon, dwarves began "butchering" them by killing the Cave Horses connected to them to acquire Wagon Wood. Unlike most remains, Wagon Wood is viable for construction (we already knew this), which was used to create a Carpenter's Workshop and to create the First Axe.
The First Axe was used to fell underground trees - eventually, instead of something random like a goblin cap statue or a tunnel tube flute, a dwarf created the First Pick out of solid wood. Despite being made of wood, it could mine through stone, connecting the link between The First Pick and The Start.

[palu]

They could have killed a gabbro man for stone. No complicated wagon theories necessary.

[Urist McVoyager]

No complicated wagon theories are necessary to start with anyway. Wagons disassemble by carpentry. So Carpenters killed them, plain and simple. 

[GavJ]

They could have killed a gabbro man for stone. No complicated wagon theories necessary.

Fair enough!
I guess you could also make a kiln or whatever out of bars of ash from a fire elemental.



Maybe the first anvil was an iron elemental who happened to drop a statue of an anvil?

[WJLIII3]

Don't you need an anvil in the forges to use them?

Technically, you need an anvil to BUILD them. These come already built out of tables, so you can use them no problem. Probably. Just a small bug. Or maybe Toady trying to pass on the secret of the first anvil.

[Tirion]

The wagon hypotheses don't make any more sense than clay. You can't kill wagons in the actual game, just like you can't gather clay without a kiln.

I'm pretty sure you can, but I need to test again with a human caravan.

[GavJ]

The wagon hypotheses don't make any more sense than clay. You can't kill wagons in the actual game, just like you can't gather clay without a kiln.

I'm pretty sure you can, but I need to test again with a human caravan.

That's some excellent science! I look forward to it. We need biomes replacing trees with roaming herds of wagons.

The creature RAWs don't mention anything like [NO_BREATHE] or whatnot. However, being in a special category of equipment creatures, it's also possible that any number of invulnerabilities are simply hardcoded. Dunno for sure, admittedly.

[Panando]

In the interest of disabusing wagon-haters of their notion that wagons are unliving, unfeeling beings:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here we see that wagons actually lose hold of items and sustain injuries, when undergoing attacks from nasty savage little dwarvsies (this is a human wagon)

Further evidence that wagons are creatures and are ALIVE, include that they can be memorialised.