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Mine is how we have evidence of wheels being used on children's toys in some south american cultures but not for transportation - they fully discovered everythi
by dmbche 2y ago
Mine is how we have evidence of wheels being used on children's toys in some south american cultures but not for transportation - they fully discovered everything to create wheeled transportation, but it's suspected that living on hilly terrain made it much less advantageous and it was not adopted.
Edit0: A good read : https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/the-concept-of-the-wheel-in-ancient-mesoamerica https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/the-concept-of-the-...
Edit1: from the source:
"Rather, and as Hernandez said (1950: 40), the ancient inhabitants of Mesoamerica did not apply the concept of revolving movement to transportation “simply because they did not want to, because of atavistic concepts worthy of being taken into account.” In a perceptive way, Hernández emphasized the indigenous ethos towards sacrifice and the offering of physical effort to the deities. Today, in Western thought, the constant technological innovation that leads to consumerism is valued, but in other cultures - ancient and modern - greater value is given to conservatism."
- shawabawa3 2y agoi guess the real invention for wheeled transportation is not wheels, but (flat) roads
- inglor_cz 2y agoPlus draft animals capable of pulling large wagons. Oxen and horses were unavailable for pre-Columbian civilizations in the new world, and poor llamas cannot cut it.
- ashoeafoot 2y agoThey had giant sloths?
- nkozyra 2y agoWell except they died out ~ 9,000+ years before the initial invention of the wheel.
- OJFord 2y agoWheels are hugely beneficial for human-powered transportation too though, well, such as the luggage example up-thread. It's thought the moyai on Easter Island were moved into place rolled on logs, they didn't have oxen or horses either, but rolling on logs or if they'd built a wheeled trailer make it much easier for a group of humans to move them without damage than just be dragging or rocking.
- dmbche 2y agoTo be clear south american civilisations had the wheel and used it for throwing pottery, for drills and many other uses different than transportation - it is also suspected that they used the same log method to move large objects. Just not a wheel-axle-bearing "vehicle"
- kragen 2y agoI don't think any American civilizations had the potter's wheel.
- rtkwe 2y agoCoiling was actually the main method and there's not any evidence they used potters wheels until after European contact and even then it didn't take off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramics_of_Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramics_of_Indigenous_peoples...
- AngryData 2y agoOn cleared and mostly flat ground yes. But if you are going up any sorts of inclines human power doesn't really cut it over any real distances without adding mechanical assistance that slows everything way down. And on rough terrain its a wash even before you consider the difficulties in making wooden wheels that can survive off-road abuse for any length of time.
- rtkwe 2y agoOver hilly terrain in jungle-y environments I bet that goes down a fair amount though, you have to make the simultaneous leap of wheeled carts plus road paving or maintenance to make the carts not a slog probably.
- potato3732842 2y agoOn the contrary, you'll apreciate wheels more if you are your own source of motive power.
- inglor_cz 2y agoIt is certainly somewhat interesting that, unlike the Chinese, the Amerindians never used a wheelbarrow. https://www.wheelbarrows.co.uk/evolution-of-the-wheelbarrow/ https://www.wheelbarrows.co.uk/evolution-of-the-wheelbarrow/
- rafram 2y ago> Oxen and horses were unavailable for pre-Columbian civilizations in the new world Eventually. Horses only became extinct in the New World around 10,000 years ago — somewhere between 15,000 and 6,000 years after humans arrived.
- inglor_cz 2y agoYes, the horse is actually an American species that expanded into the Old World. The pre-Columbian civilizations (and by that I mean the highly organized socially stratified societies that we are aware of) only emerged several millennia after the paleo-Indians hunted horses to extinction, though.
- mr_toad 2y agoYou can’t scale up a wheel on a children’s toy and expect it to work on a loaded cart. It would just break. Cartwheels that will go the distance require fairly skilled carpentry.
- kragen 2y agoPre-Columbian Mesoamericans did have fairly skilled carpentry, though. They just didn't have cart wheels.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rtkwe 2y agoAnother potential reason it was never scaled up to carts is they didn't have access to a great draft animal candidate. Without that early carts are a lot less useful. The largest options were llamas or alpacas which are still fairly small and weak as draft animals go. The nearest option would have been buffalo in North America but they don't have great base temperaments for domesticating and they're not geographically relevant to South America even if they were.