idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
If you didn't have your head up your ***, maybe you'd stop to consider if wheeled modes of transportation were actually something that would be a step forward for American civilizations.
Let's see, you have the Aztec peoples. They lived in a land covered in jungle interspersed with rivers and lakes. Wheels, not so useful actually. Just maintaining the massive network of roads they had was already a huge task, and they were designed for passage on foot.
Then again, they were also mostly paved. And Europe had yet to even seriously start paving roads in cities.
Then we have the Maya, who lived in an area also covered in dense forest. Accept they also have to deal with mountains.
Again, not a great place to rely on the wheel.
They had CERTAINLY created the wheel. They did not use it for transport. Not because that was outside their realm of possibilities, but because it would have been a stupid thing to do. Boats were, in nearly every situation, vastly superior for transportation in a South/Central American context.
Let's see, you have the Aztec peoples. They lived in a land covered in jungle interspersed with rivers and lakes. Wheels, not so useful actually. Just maintaining the massive network of roads they had was already a huge task, and they were designed for passage on foot.
Then again, they were also mostly paved. And Europe had yet to even seriously start paving roads in cities.
Then we have the Maya, who lived in an area also covered in dense forest. Accept they also have to deal with mountains.
Again, not a great place to rely on the wheel.
They had CERTAINLY created the wheel. They did not use it for transport. Not because that was outside their realm of possibilities, but because it would have been a stupid thing to do. Boats were, in nearly every situation, vastly superior for transportation in a South/Central American context.
What's your point? Why they didn't use wheels as a tool doesn't matter. The fact that they didn't, does. It means that they didn't develop a whole set of tools which derive from the wheel (pulleys and screws specifically). Without those, their technological development was pretty much stagnant (ie: they didn't get that "step ahead"). Add in no metallurgical development (which theoretically could appear without wheels, but didn't in this case), and they were amazingly primitive relative to pretty much the entire rest of the world at that time.
I don't really care about the reasons why. It's like you're trying to come up with excuses for this. I'm not placing blame here. I'm just stating a fact.
Edited, Jan 23rd 2012 6:33pm by gbaji
