AmericasWheel

There are early colonial accounts of Motecuhzoma's "zoo" containing "clockwork birds and animals" (mentioned in Prescott, who I think got it from Clavijero, who I think in turn got that from a conquistadore - possibly Cortes's letters to the big cheese back in Spain) although it seems probable that the claim came from a conquistadore wishing to big up the extent of their "discovery" to a boss on the other side of the ocean who was unlikely to check up on such a claim. Er... not disagreeing with you at all then, just your post reminded me of that obscure bit of trivia. As someone noted on either this forum or archaeologica, "progress" isn't always a uniform or linear process wherein all cultures develop the same innovations in the same order. People who develop trousers in the middle of a desert will probably come up with a pretty impressive trouser press before they arrive at the design for a decent boat, if you see what I mean. The lack of wheel use is still a puzzle though, despite all that's been said on the topic.

Good point about the boats back there. Good point about wheelbarrows, but I guess the thing is that carrying frames already did a pretty good job (especially over long distances involving climbing) and they just weren't accustomed to thinking there might be an easier way, least of all one related to a round thing that few people knew or cared about. On the subject of "relative backwardness", I'd disagree that it applies in the case of pottery. Looking close up at the ceramics in INAH and other Mexican museums and they're often so perfect that you'd swear they'd been thrown on a potter's wheel even though obviously they haven't. I guess the lack of wheel inspired Mexican (well, not even just Mexican) ceramic workers to step up their pot game, as it were.

Log rollers were indeed known in the Americas. But that's not the same as the wheel. Actually, one of the reasons of the relative backwardness of the Americans is precisely the lack of applications of the wheel to pottery and machinery, rather than just transportation. Why they didn't have the wheel but in toys?

Edited by pinguin - 17-Jul-2007 at 16:05

Originally posted by Paul Originally posted by Constantine XI The reason they did not make use of the wheel like in the Old World was they lacked any sort of draft animal in the Americas tame enough to be attached to it.   Trollies and wheel barrows are still a very useful tool.

That's true, but even in the Old World application of these things was limited. The wheelbarrow, to my knowledge, was not invented until the medieval period by the Chinese - its use spreading to only certain areas of the Old World continents. That makes this very basic device a pretty late arrival, not long preceding the discovery of the New World. The inhabitants of Oceania and Australia, to my knowledge, never made use of either trolleys or wheelbarrows, let alone more advanced devices like the carriage or chariot.

Looking at a civilisation like the Aztecs, their trade and agriculture could be performed via boat along the canals of Lake Texcoco, so not much need for wheeled carrying devices. The Incas likewise did much of their travelling and transportation via boat along the Pacific coast, or up and down steep mountaints - perhaps a further disincentive to develop the devices.

Ugh. I'm afraid I'm not going to be very good with the links on this, but the wheel or at least its principle was known in pre-Colombian Mexico. There's a famous wheeled toy (a figure of either a deer or a dog) from Classic era Veracruz - the photo turns up in a lot of books so have a look Mary Ellen Miller's The Art of Mesoamerica (Thames & Hudson) should be easy to find - photo is on page 99 of my 1996 edition). Furthermore, I've read the suggestion that the Mexica (and certainly the Olmecs) used wooden logs as rollers to shift those big old stones around. the generally accepted theory as I understand it is that the wheel never really caught on (in Mexico at least) for a number of reasons, these being (1) no large domesticated beast of burden which could pull a wheeled vehicle (2) generally uneven terrain of most of the country made transportation by carrying frame a lot more practical. I've got about a million books on this culture and I must have needed to dip into about half of them over the last week, so I'm sorry but right now I can't even recall where I read that. Best I can do is quote from Eric Wolf's Sons of the Shaking Earth (University of Chicago Press, page 184):

They knew how to make wheels and axles but they only used tem in children's toys. Why they never scaled the technology up is unknown.