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> Given the evidence that Neandertals were not able to master things like sewing Don't read too much into that. Native Americans (homo sapiens from the whole A

> Given the evidence that Neandertals were not able to master things like sewing Don't read too much into that. Native Americans (homo sapiens from the whole American continent) didn't master wheels for transport. Aztecs did have toys that used wheels, the concept wasn't foreign, but somehow they didn't see the need to upscale it for transport. Yes, we can argue that they didn't have draught animals, but there are plenty of human powered uses for wheels, and some regions did have horses, llamas or buffaloes. Maybe Neanderthals just weren't interested.

progre 5y ago
Horses and humans i the Americas at the same time is a post-Columbus thing. Buffaloes can't be domesticated. Llamas are mountain animals and wheeled wagons in mountains are extra hard to do well. Even in the old world, wheels where primarily a steppe thing. Edit: I was wrong about the horses, there is a overlap.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  No. Before 12800 years ago, North America was home to both horses and camels, along with ~30 other now extinct genera including mammoths, mastodons, cheetahs, dire wolves, giant sloths, and a bear much larger than the grizzly. All of those were obliterated at that geological instant, along with the Clovis culture, apparently by a meteorite or comet strike. It also melted many cubic miles of glacial ice in an instant, scouring out the Scablands of eastern Washington state in a flood hundreds of feet deep, carving out the whole Columbia Gorge in only days. It ignited continent-spanning fires that destroyed everything anyone might have built. Nothing would have prevented the people who lived before then from domesticating horses and using them to pull wagons. None has been found, but remarkable little remains of the people who were in North America for at least 10 millennia before then.
  - poulpy123 5y ago
    Horses were domesticated between 3500 and 2000 BCE. The probability they could have been domesticated 10 000 years before in America is quite low
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      That happened in Eurasia. Events in the Americas were decoupled from Eurasia. The fact is, we don't have any evidence for or against any domestication, or wheels, in North America. Any evidence that might have existed was burned up along with everything else, in the YD conflagration. So, any estimation of probability is 100% guessing, with a decorative and misleading frosting of "science". What we do have firm evidence for is domestication of tree species in South America before 10,000 years ago. So, domestication did happen there before similar events in Eurasia.
      - progre 5y ago
        Plant domestication seems to be on quite similar timelines on both continents.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        Tree domestication takes a lot longer than for pulses and grains, which hints they might have started rather earlier. The Amazon basin was never as heavily affected by ice ages as temperate regions smothered under ice, miles deep, although of course it went through major climate shifts of its own. I would not be surprised to learn that, 20kya, much of it was savanna.
  - arcwhite 5y ago
    Where are you getting this theory that there was an impact event that.killed off both the megafauna and the Clovis people's off? Everything (credible) I'm able to find suggests/theorises that the Clovis differentiated into different groups of Native American populations, and that gradual climate change did most of the megafauna in.
    - btilly 5y ago
      There have been many interglacials and only in one did the megafauna die out en masse. This is a good argument against it simply being from climate change. Instead look to what was different in the most recent one. A weird species on 2 feet with hunting techniques that the megafauna had never encountered before. Such as using fire to drive whole herds of horses off of a cliff.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Not plausible. Humans at much higher density had been able to drive island populations to extinction, but had not succeeded on a continent. Furthermore, they had been in the Americas for many millennia already. Horses and camels were all over Asia, coeval with humans, and did fine. Lions survived in in Europe well into recorded history. Africa, of course, retained about everything for hundreds of millennia, except for 3 genera right at 12800 years ago. The only notable extinction in Eurasia was the woolly mammoth, which survived only on Wrangel Island. Humans had been in the Americas for many millennia, but populations of these animals did not decline during that time. Instead, the 30+ genera and the Clovis people all vanished at identically the same time, coincident with the layer of radically elevated platinum dust, shocked quartz, and soot.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ∼12,800 Years Ago. Authors: Wendy S. Wolbach, Joanne P. Ballard, Paul A. Mayewski, [+24 others] Journal of Geology, 2018, volume 126, pp. 165–184 http://sci-hub.se/10.1086/695703 http://sci-hub.se/10.1086/695703 Abstract: The Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) cosmic-impact hypothesis is based on considerable evidence that Earth collided with fragments of a disintegrating ≥100-km-diameter comet, the remnants of which persist within the inner solar system ∼12,800 y later. Evidence suggests that the YDB cosmic impact triggered an “impact winter” and the subsequent Younger Dryas (YD) climate episode, biomass burning, late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions, and human cultural shifts and population declines. The cosmic impact deposited anomalously high concentrations of platinum over much of the Northern Hemisphere, as recorded at 26 YDB sites at the YD onset, including the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 ice core, in which platinum deposition spans ∼21 y (∼12,836–12,815 cal BP). The YD onset also exhibits increased dust concentrations, synchronous with the onset of a remarkably high peak in ammonium, a biomass-burning aerosol. In four ice-core sequences from Greenland, Antarctica, and Russia, similar anomalous peaks in other combustion aerosols occur, including nitrate, oxalate, acetate, and formate, reflecting one of the largest biomass-burning episodes in more than 120,000 y. In support of widespread wildfires, the perturbations in CO2 records from Taylor Glacier, Antarctica, suggest that biomass burning at the YD onset may have consumed ∼10 million km^2, or ∼9% of Earth’s terrestrial bio-mass. The ice record is consistent with YDB impact theory that extensive impact-related biomass burning triggered the abrupt onset of an impact winter, which led, through climatic feedbacks, to the anomalous YD climate episode.
WalterBright 5y ago
Even a wheelbarrow is a big deal. But making a practical wheel out of wood would take some significant woodworking and joinery skills. They may have tried, and just gave up after the wheel would fracture after a few moments use. I.e. the concept of the wheel and making a successful implementation of it are very different things.
jcranmer 5y ago
> somehow they didn't see the need to upscale it for transport If you weren't aware, the Aztec capital was built in the middle of a lake, a kind of larger version of Venice, so the most effective way to move goods around would by boat rather than any land-based transportation. The area outside of Lake Texcoco would have been quite mountainous, with lowland regions largely being dense jungles, both regions that are obviously poorly suited for wheeled transportation in general. This is the kind of terrain where the modern US Army, with all of its technological access, will still rely on pack mules to move goods. Do you really think wheeled transport would have been a viable invention in such circumstances?
- thesuitonym 5y ago
  That's exactly the point that the GP is making. It's not that they were incapable of creating the technology, they just didn't see it as useful. Similarly, the Neanderthals may have been capable of sewing, they just didn't do it.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  Even in Venice they use wheelbarrows and sack trucks.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    where the wheelbarrow is concerned the question then arises, is the wheelbarrow a primary wheeled invention of a secondary one, that is to say do people invent stuff like carts because they are really necessary for moving things around in their area and then afterwards think hey what if we had a smaller cart for moving things in smaller areas? I think it's a secondary invention, and then if you are in an area where the primary invention just doesn't make much sense neither one gets invented.
  - doodlebugging 5y ago
    But were those wheelbarrows invented in Venice to handle problems that they encountered moving things around their local environment or did they get theirs from some traveler who agreed to tell them where they could get their own?
xhevahir 5y ago
I seem to remember reading that in some areas of southern China the wheel didn't see widespread use until the twentieth century.
mr_toad 5y ago
> toys that used wheels Toy wheels don’t scale. A solid piece of wood is too fragile, it easily splits into rings. A good wooden wheel is harder than it looks. You need planks that are crossed with each other, which require good quality saws and a tight fit. Secondly, you need good well fitted axels, which also requires precision tools.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > require good quality saws and a tight fit The Aztecs and other South and Central American societies were capable of fine stonework so I think they at least had the potential to do fine woodwork. Even a poor quality wheel and axle makes a useful wheelbarrow.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > You need planks that are crossed with each other, which require good quality saws and a tight fit. You don't need saws at all. Initial shaping with an adze, and subsequent flattening/fitting of the two pieces with friction and an abrasive like sand would give you closely fitted wood surfaces, though not necessarily all that flat. Note that a somewhat similar technique was used to fit irregular stone blocks together with high precision by the Inca. You could also create a flat wood surface by abrasion against a flat stone surface, but that is more labor intensive to produce.

progre 5y ago

Horses and humans i the Americas at the same time is a post-Columbus thing. Buffaloes can't be domesticated. Llamas are mountain animals and wheeled wagons in mountains are extra hard to do well. Even in the old world, wheels where primarily a steppe thing. Edit: I was wrong about the horses, there is a overlap.

ncmncm 5y ago
No. Before 12800 years ago, North America was home to both horses and camels, along with ~30 other now extinct genera including mammoths, mastodons, cheetahs, dire wolves, giant sloths, and a bear much larger than the grizzly. All of those were obliterated at that geological instant, along with the Clovis culture, apparently by a meteorite or comet strike. It also melted many cubic miles of glacial ice in an instant, scouring out the Scablands of eastern Washington state in a flood hundreds of feet deep, carving out the whole Columbia Gorge in only days. It ignited continent-spanning fires that destroyed everything anyone might have built. Nothing would have prevented the people who lived before then from domesticating horses and using them to pull wagons. None has been found, but remarkable little remains of the people who were in North America for at least 10 millennia before then.
- poulpy123 5y ago
  Horses were domesticated between 3500 and 2000 BCE. The probability they could have been domesticated 10 000 years before in America is quite low
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    That happened in Eurasia. Events in the Americas were decoupled from Eurasia. The fact is, we don't have any evidence for or against any domestication, or wheels, in North America. Any evidence that might have existed was burned up along with everything else, in the YD conflagration. So, any estimation of probability is 100% guessing, with a decorative and misleading frosting of "science". What we do have firm evidence for is domestication of tree species in South America before 10,000 years ago. So, domestication did happen there before similar events in Eurasia.
    - progre 5y ago
      Plant domestication seems to be on quite similar timelines on both continents.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Tree domestication takes a lot longer than for pulses and grains, which hints they might have started rather earlier. The Amazon basin was never as heavily affected by ice ages as temperate regions smothered under ice, miles deep, although of course it went through major climate shifts of its own. I would not be surprised to learn that, 20kya, much of it was savanna.
- arcwhite 5y ago
  Where are you getting this theory that there was an impact event that.killed off both the megafauna and the Clovis people's off? Everything (credible) I'm able to find suggests/theorises that the Clovis differentiated into different groups of Native American populations, and that gradual climate change did most of the megafauna in.
  - btilly 5y ago
    There have been many interglacials and only in one did the megafauna die out en masse. This is a good argument against it simply being from climate change. Instead look to what was different in the most recent one. A weird species on 2 feet with hunting techniques that the megafauna had never encountered before. Such as using fire to drive whole herds of horses off of a cliff.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Not plausible. Humans at much higher density had been able to drive island populations to extinction, but had not succeeded on a continent. Furthermore, they had been in the Americas for many millennia already. Horses and camels were all over Asia, coeval with humans, and did fine. Lions survived in in Europe well into recorded history. Africa, of course, retained about everything for hundreds of millennia, except for 3 genera right at 12800 years ago. The only notable extinction in Eurasia was the woolly mammoth, which survived only on Wrangel Island. Humans had been in the Americas for many millennia, but populations of these animals did not decline during that time. Instead, the 30+ genera and the Clovis people all vanished at identically the same time, coincident with the layer of radically elevated platinum dust, shocked quartz, and soot.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ∼12,800 Years Ago. Authors: Wendy S. Wolbach, Joanne P. Ballard, Paul A. Mayewski, [+24 others] Journal of Geology, 2018, volume 126, pp. 165–184 http://sci-hub.se/10.1086/695703 http://sci-hub.se/10.1086/695703 Abstract: The Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) cosmic-impact hypothesis is based on considerable evidence that Earth collided with fragments of a disintegrating ≥100-km-diameter comet, the remnants of which persist within the inner solar system ∼12,800 y later. Evidence suggests that the YDB cosmic impact triggered an “impact winter” and the subsequent Younger Dryas (YD) climate episode, biomass burning, late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions, and human cultural shifts and population declines. The cosmic impact deposited anomalously high concentrations of platinum over much of the Northern Hemisphere, as recorded at 26 YDB sites at the YD onset, including the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 ice core, in which platinum deposition spans ∼21 y (∼12,836–12,815 cal BP). The YD onset also exhibits increased dust concentrations, synchronous with the onset of a remarkably high peak in ammonium, a biomass-burning aerosol. In four ice-core sequences from Greenland, Antarctica, and Russia, similar anomalous peaks in other combustion aerosols occur, including nitrate, oxalate, acetate, and formate, reflecting one of the largest biomass-burning episodes in more than 120,000 y. In support of widespread wildfires, the perturbations in CO2 records from Taylor Glacier, Antarctica, suggest that biomass burning at the YD onset may have consumed ∼10 million km^2, or ∼9% of Earth’s terrestrial bio-mass. The ice record is consistent with YDB impact theory that extensive impact-related biomass burning triggered the abrupt onset of an impact winter, which led, through climatic feedbacks, to the anomalous YD climate episode.

WalterBright 5y ago

Even a wheelbarrow is a big deal. But making a practical wheel out of wood would take some significant woodworking and joinery skills. They may have tried, and just gave up after the wheel would fracture after a few moments use. I.e. the concept of the wheel and making a successful implementation of it are very different things.

jcranmer 5y ago

> somehow they didn't see the need to upscale it for transport If you weren't aware, the Aztec capital was built in the middle of a lake, a kind of larger version of Venice, so the most effective way to move goods around would by boat rather than any land-based transportation. The area outside of Lake Texcoco would have been quite mountainous, with lowland regions largely being dense jungles, both regions that are obviously poorly suited for wheeled transportation in general. This is the kind of terrain where the modern US Army, with all of its technological access, will still rely on pack mules to move goods. Do you really think wheeled transport would have been a viable invention in such circumstances?

thesuitonym 5y ago
That's exactly the point that the GP is making. It's not that they were incapable of creating the technology, they just didn't see it as useful. Similarly, the Neanderthals may have been capable of sewing, they just didn't do it.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
Even in Venice they use wheelbarrows and sack trucks.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  where the wheelbarrow is concerned the question then arises, is the wheelbarrow a primary wheeled invention of a secondary one, that is to say do people invent stuff like carts because they are really necessary for moving things around in their area and then afterwards think hey what if we had a smaller cart for moving things in smaller areas? I think it's a secondary invention, and then if you are in an area where the primary invention just doesn't make much sense neither one gets invented.
- doodlebugging 5y ago
  But were those wheelbarrows invented in Venice to handle problems that they encountered moving things around their local environment or did they get theirs from some traveler who agreed to tell them where they could get their own?

xhevahir 5y ago

I seem to remember reading that in some areas of southern China the wheel didn't see widespread use until the twentieth century.

mr_toad 5y ago

> toys that used wheels Toy wheels don’t scale. A solid piece of wood is too fragile, it easily splits into rings. A good wooden wheel is harder than it looks. You need planks that are crossed with each other, which require good quality saws and a tight fit. Secondly, you need good well fitted axels, which also requires precision tools.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
> require good quality saws and a tight fit The Aztecs and other South and Central American societies were capable of fine stonework so I think they at least had the potential to do fine woodwork. Even a poor quality wheel and axle makes a useful wheelbarrow.
webmaven 5y ago
> You need planks that are crossed with each other, which require good quality saws and a tight fit. You don't need saws at all. Initial shaping with an adze, and subsequent flattening/fitting of the two pieces with friction and an abrasive like sand would give you closely fitted wood surfaces, though not necessarily all that flat. Note that a somewhat similar technique was used to fit irregular stone blocks together with high precision by the Inca. You could also create a flat wood surface by abrasion against a flat stone surface, but that is more labor intensive to produce.