My main concern with the wheel is not the lack in transportation (supplied by canoe transport or lama caravans), or the application in pottery. In the last case we know Amerindians produced masterpieces of pottery, and that they even used it as a media for portraits. A noble Inca, for instance, would have a pottery of himself, like Greeks had scuptures and the people of the Renacense had paintings.

No, my main concern was the lack of development in machinery, particularly in clockworks. Clockwork, specially using the toothed wheel, was a main driven force behind the technological development of the West, the Muslim world and China.

Thanks for that information, Yaomitl, that may suggest that only the richest places could afford such labor intensive work, would that be correct?

You mentioned stone heads and that set my imagination going. Somehow “The tears of the trees” came to mind and so rubber trees. The origins of rubber began in Mesoamerica by the Olmec and Mayan people. The “discovery” of  Mesoamerica by the Spanish first told the world of the use of latex products associated with tribal power and religion.

The Olmecs left behind artifacts such as large heads carved from stone. They were originally farmers but built large cities of stone, religious centers with temples, and places for the priests, artists, and builders. For (recreation?) they played a ball game where heavy rubber ball was knocked around with two teams trying to score "goals" (no hand or foot contact allowed). The loser was sacrificed.

This ritual ball game was played on stone courts as long as a football field. The sight of huge, bouncing solid rubber balls of the Mayans used amazed the Spanish. Some were a foot in diameter and weighed more than 15 pounds. The Spanish left no record of how the game was played, they systematically wiped out all records of the native religion to replace it with their own.  Illustrations on Mayan pottery, the ball fields and reports by independent explorers provide insights. In one version, a smaller ball was hit with a stick, in another it was thrown through an overhead hoop. Sacred music accompanied these ritual events.

Now what could they be worshipping at such places, the gods? Worshipping gods is a Near East phenomena. To me it sounds like the worship of rubber tree and being praised as the source of their power. Why? Perhaps the use of rubber products played a part in the way they built their cities without wheels.

Can the trunks of rubber trees bend without breaking and how slippery are they to use? But why waste the trees, when the sap could be used on other substances to give them a coating? The sap could be also used to make rubber mats that when treated properly would be like slippery plastic, some water or perhaps oil and the heaviest stones would slide along. The rubber could be also used to make heavy duty slings and such.

In all the Olmec civilization was an important political/religious center, which controlled vast flood plains and river trade routes. Like in the Egyptian experience flood plains are the place for carting stones on sleds. The first drainage system in Mesoamerica was discovered there, channeled blocks of stone set into the earth, covered with slabs. Anyway just another of my ideas. You other guys are way behind!

As far as I found out, the "tooth wheels" of the figure 2, above, it was common in the Peruvian civilizations. They where, indeed, mace heads used in battle. They existed in several cultures, included Moche. However, it is still amazing how closely look to a piece of machinery. Just a strange coincidence and nothing more

Pinguin

KABAL!!! Great Red Clay. We have a name and a refference now. Good way to start a research.

By the way, ending with the topic of maces, those peaces show Peruvians were quite good metalurgists as well. A point to consider.

Pinguin

When looking at the picture of the wheeled toy, I wonder if what seems like wheels are a distraction. If the natives of a pre-wheel culture wanted to suggest movement by a toy animal they would put rollers underneath, which the picture clearly shows. We can go further and say are the ends really wheels as we know them or part of a solid state dumbbell shaped device? The wheels may roll at all, but could suggest the attachment of rubber pads to make the pulling or pushing of larger objects easier. 

The many uses of rubber suggest how far their technology went. Hard rubber, soft rubber, spongy rubber and so on, hey we had to rediscover all that and we are still learning!

 Photo two has been explained as weapons, but how would you train to use such weapons without killing you own men in the process? Again no problem to those with a rubber technology, use rubber weapons for training and use rubber mats to learn to leap and so brain your opponent when handling the real thing.

 Photo three has a man that looks like he jumping from trampoline device with pigtails flying in the air from his head, He jumps so high the figures beneath him look small. Only the use of rubber could make this possible

 Photo seven could be a ball hoop, but could be a “birthstone” the same objects were found in Neothilic Europe and signify rebirth or being born again from the earth mother.  

Edgewaters said; "Well, if those bits rotate, then they're wheels not rollers. They have wheels, an axle, and bearings."  

Edgewaters also said; There's a real mystery with those toys, which makes me wonder if maybe we're wrong about the wheel in the Americas.

Ditto; True, but there was not a lack of machinery - the Inca had a highly developed textiles industry which rivalled anything in Europe at the time of discovery, and it was using complex looms and a system of mass production.

Ditto; The Inca (and their Andean predecessors) had an intense understanding of basic hydraulic principles and textile manufacturing. What's interesting is that it's the combination of these two things, plus the wheel, that essentially gave birth to the industrial revolution - in the form of the spinning jenny and the waterframe, ultimately combined in the spinning mule. The lack of the applied use of the wheel may have potentially cost the Inca more dearly than anyone realizes.

Ditto” The thing is that the wheel, in the Old World, didn't just suddenly appear in complete form; it evolved gradually. But here, in a place where this process of technological evolution is never supposed to have occurred, is a fully developed wheel featuring the axle and bearing. I am a little skeptical of the notion that someone just invented it out of the blue, as that's just not the way it happened in the Old World. It was a very gradual process and involved alot of practical usages of proto-wheel forms.
An endlessly frustrating mystery, totally maddening ...

Ditto: Sleds would do.

 Ditto; The point about the rollers is that we accept rollers were used, without any evidence that they had them, why do we say they didn't have the wheel just because we haven't found one? Have we found a sled or roller?

There are many types of debaters, those who come in with an open mind, those with a closed mind, those who argue, and those playing games.  I’m in the first category and stuff the rest. I’m not interested in saying the same things over and over again. If you really are interested an open exchange of ideas then I am too. I like you last questions but I have answered most of them already. If you find something you can agree with  then let's discuss that shall we?  

Perhaps, but the problem with the Americas is not much the lack of knowledge but the large number of idiotic fantasies that cover the reality. The list is endless: "the white rulers of Tiahuanaco", "the astronauts landing in Nasca", "The black phylosophers teaching the Olmecs", "The Lamanites of the Mormons", "The fountain of youth", "The cities of the Caesars", "The chupacabras"..... name it.

Every single idiot in this world has a theory about the Americas :)

However, if one wants to get a good idea of what really happened there are good books on history, arts and engineering of ancient americas. It is amazing what they tell us and it is a lot better than fantasies, because it is real.

Pinguin

There is an excelent book about the topic published in the U.S., that weight a ton, and that cost me a fortune to import , but that was worth it. I would recomend you to get it and probably is in a public library.  It tells a good fraction of the inventions and developments of Natives of the hemisphere. There are more that 450 fascinating entries. It is called

American Indian Contributions to the World

by Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield