South American culture among others didn't invent the wheel???????

O.k guys.... Was tanning my brain the other night and thought of something. An extraordinary number of Meso-American cultures are said to have not invented the wheel. According to Wikipedia even the Egyptians didn't have the wheel until invasion by a European Culture. Now.... Why..???

Is it just me or is it probably the most basic of designs in the world.?

The Ellipse would have been everywhere these people looked, the sun and moon are Ellipses both worshiped by many of these cultures. You cut a tree down and if you cut the stump again... You have a wheel. It seems a bit ridiculous to me that the wheel wasn't in use. The ancient Aztec calender we hear so much about is a circle.?!!!! And no one back then realized it could roll?? Give me a break. You put any non rigid object on a slope and you don't need to be a genius to work out the smoother and rounder it is the further and faster it rolls.

So why??? Why didn't they invent it???

Iv heard the theories that these cultures had technology to somehow levitate or lighten heavy loads in order to build incredible structures like the Pyramids, Machu Pichu etc. Doesn't that make sense of the lack of a wheel? Why bother making a cart, wheelbarrow or anything if you don't need to??

Love to hear your ideas, Cheers dudes..

Necessity is the mother of invention and when the wheel was needed , it was invented , mostly for mounted warfare at first and transportation . A thin wheel is of little value for moving large stones as were used in the pyramids and structures in central and south America . A log roller and wedges are much better . Many large stone structures were constructed in the middle and far east after the wheel had been invented but wheels/wagons/chariots were structurally strong enough to transport people and supplies but not huge monolithic stones . The wheel and the domestication of horses seems to have gone hand in hand as folks quickly realized the possibility but there were no horses in central and south America and no open desert/plain type country of the middle east to run . My theory but i'd like to hear others . In addition with the heavy jungles of much of central and south America the treasury would have to be spent constructing interlocking road system wide enough for two vehicles with wheels to meet and pass eachother by jungle clearing , laying road beds and road surfaces where in the middle east a road was pretty much any direction you wished to go in your chariot or wagons of trade goods .

They had wheeled toys.
Wheeled Pull Toy Tres Zapotes, Veracruz Mexico, ca. 100-200 AD
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reply to post by bandito


Actually it's more like they lacked a beast of burden in the new world.
Wheels work great when pulled by a horse or Ox etc

They didn't need it!
The Inkas lives in the Andes, had no horses nor bulls to pull a wheeled wagon. Their agriculture was extensive but in small terraces wich you have to climb (first form of geo ingeneering), there is no room for using animals there.
Llamas are not that strong, they used a lot of them like caravans to move the products and going up and down the steep mountains. They did had roads that connected the whole empire from Ecuador to Chile and Argentina, but in some places this trail is very narrow, only for a person to walk and a bunch of llamas in line.

Cheers
Jechu

Well the Egyptian thing seems to be in direct conflict with what it says on this page, they have the boot firmly on the other foot

The wheel was furthered improved on later by the Egyptians, who made wheels with spokes, which could be found on Egyptian chariots of around 2000 BC. Over in Ancient India, chariots with spoked wheels dating back to around 1500 B.C. were also discovered. The Greeks too, adopted the idea of wheel-making from the Egyptians and made further improvements to it.

reply to post by Jechu


Not just the Incas but the Olmecs, Mayans as well as the Aztec all had roads.

Mayan road, at Coba.

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An Ancient Mayan Paved Road Leading in to Shinkultic

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Inca road system

The Inca road system was the most extensive and highly advanced transportation system in pre-Columbian South America.[1] The network was based on two north-south roads with numerous branches.[2] The best known portion of the road system is the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.

I wouldn't say they weren't aware of the wheel or it's uses, so much as they didn't find it practical to use for transportation, given the terrain they had.

THE WHEEL IN ANCIENT AMERICA
Paul R. Cheesman
BYU Studies, Vol. 9 # 2,:185-197 (Winter 1969)
(take the above with a grain of salt, BYU and LDS has a religious slant to Mesoamerican history)

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Another historical write-up;
Real smart folks, but no wheel

While it is certainly true that the Maya did not possess the potter's wheel, they did make use of a device called the k'abal. This was a wooden disk that rested on a smooth board between the potter's feet. Spun by foot. the k'abal was not unlike the potter's wheel that had been in use in the Old World for over five thousand years. Still, there was no wheel.

I think that for the average citizen, whether in Egypt, Sumer, or ancient Mexico, you simply learn to use the tools that have entered the realm of common knowledge. For Sumerians and later Egyptians, this included the wheel. Wheeled carts, pottery wheels, etc. For the Mayan, the wheel was not in common usage and probably not known to the average, uneducated worker, but I do think it had been "invented" there as well but it's use was too limited to become common.

Talk about suppression of technology,
that's the native American Indians to a tee.

They knew about the wheel.

As their most sacred symbol,
the calendar round,
it was forbidden
to ride it.



In eastern Cultures the foot is considered
the lowest most insulting part of the body.

Consider Thailand.
If someone drops a coin,
and it rolls across the ground,
a westerner may step on it to stop it
then bend down to pick it up, but as they
turn to hand it to the person who dropped it...

They find an angry mob, that litterally beats them to death.

See... the coin in Thailand has a picture of memebers of the
Royal Family on it. An you just put your foot on his face.

precolumbianwheel.com...

Same thing for the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca.
For instance, a childs toy (with wheels) was found.
But it was dug up at the site of a village that was
completely and utterly destroyed.
Almost as if the Indian world
had found them guilty of
high blasphemy and
eradicated the
whole village.


David Grouchy

Hmmmm... Very interesting. Especially the carved, wheeled toys. But then why are we educated to believe they just did not have the wheel altogether.?

If the Mayans had one of the most extensive road networks in the old world then it seems to me they could well have used the wheel to good effect. Even a rudimentary wheel barrow design could have been handy. Those carved toys are effectively exactly the same design (when it comes to the wheels) as a Carriage or Caravan.

Fair enough though that these cultures lacked a ''beast of burden'' but failing at that meant the best they had according to modern archaeological records are ''Drag Sleds.'' And that to me seems a far, far cry from the ease the use of wheels bring.

The Maya and Inca lived in fairly mountainous terrain, a contributing factor to their lack of a need for the wheel in transportation. Explain to me though how it was better or even possible to ''drag'' boulders up a mountain. The sheer size of these immense, uncut stones is staggering. (Don't get me started on how they were carved to perfection)

I don't know what exactly was used to do this but it seems very easy to just say these mammoth monuments were constructed using brute force and perseverance. Same thing is attributed to the construction of the Pyramids. The ''Great Pyramid of Giza'' apparently built in the lifetime of one pharaoh! History Channel documentary ''Ancient Aliens'' rubbishes this commonly accepted fact, their evidence? It wasn't physically possible to have enough human hands on ropes, pulleys or pushing to move them let alone up quite a steep gradient and I think the same could be said for the Maya and Inca.

Typically couldn't find any pics of massive rocks at the top of mountains!! Anyone know of any post em!!

reply to post by SLAYER69


Yeah but they work better and faster, and a damn site cooler when pulled by a pack of Jaguars!!

reply to post by Blackmarketeer



STAR.

Thanks for the info and links. Great input.

Its something I have wondered about for a while, With the probable exception of North Africa, Egypt etc. the wheel only arrived in Africa with the colonial Europeans, looking at some parts especially Southern Africa the wheel did not exist as far as I know. The land in places is fairly flat. There where beasts of burden cattle etc. Although most of the structures where made from wood, clay, mud and grass maybe it wasn't heavy enough to invent a wheel?