
The last Incan suspension bridge is made entirely of grass and woven by hand - llambda
http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2013/06/10/the_last_incan_suspension_bridge_is_made_entirely_of_grass_and_woven_by.html?wpsrc=theweek
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hdevalence
> The Incas never invented the wheel...

In fact, the Incans did know about wheels, it's just that wheels are
considerably less useful when you don't have any large pack animals to pull
things. It's an accident of geography, and the article would be better off
without the vaguely racist opening about how the "primitive" Incans were able
to do amazing things with fibres even though they never "figured out" this
other stuff.

~~~
Aloisius
_In fact, the Incans did know about wheels, it 's just that wheels are
considerably less useful when you don't have any large pack animals to pull
things._

The Incans did not have the wheel (when we refer to people having the wheel,
we mean with an axle). They used wood beams to roll things around, but that's
not a wheel. As far as I know, the only group that had the wheel in the
Americas were the ancient Mexicans.

Further, devices like wheel barrows and carts are incredibly useful with or
without pack animals. Doubly so if you had the incredible manpower that the
Incans had where you can easily just use humans to pull them instead of pack
animals. Wheels aren't just for hauling things around either, it is hard to
express how _incredibly_ useful potter's wheels has been for the last five
thousand years.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I think Incans lived in the mountains and lacked lots of flat ground with
which to roll things around. So they did develop some wheel-like devices, but
they never applied them in things like wheel barrows or carts because those
are just not that useful going up and down mountains.

~~~
Aloisius
On well worn paths on moderate to even heavy inclines, a cart is still highly
effective at reducing manpower necessary to move heavy objects (like the giant
stones the Incans moved).

The Incans didn't not have the wheel because they wouldn't have found it
useful. The Incans didn't have the wheel and axle because it wasn't an obvious
invention.

All evidence points to the wheel in the "old world" (ugh, I hate that term)
being invented in one place at one time. It wasn't obvious. It wasn't
simultaneously invented by hundreds of people across Europe, Asia and Africa.
It was simply copied everywhere and Europe, Asia and Africa were fortunate
enough to be connected.

------
sbierwagen
This is a condensed version of a longer article:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/life/world_of_wonders/2011/02/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/world_of_wonders/2011/02/the_last_incan_grass_bridge.html)

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anonymoushn
It's not really a 500-year-old bridge if they install a new one every year...

~~~
rubyrescue
That's actually a famous paradox -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)

~~~
redthrowaway
This isn't that, though. They're not replacing the bridge strand-by-strand;
they construct an entirely new bridge each year then get rid of the old one.

~~~
tantalor
They use the old bridge to bootstrap the new bridge, by pulling the new ropes
across. Each bridge is a descendent of the previous bridge. The continuity
makes a "500 year old bridge".

These bridges were intended to be temporary, whereas stone or metal bridges
are intended to be permanent. You are comparing apples to oranges.

The new bridge and the old bridge are actually the same bridge, just made with
different materials.

~~~
adventured
The bridges are in the same location, but they are not the same bridge.

One references location ('the bridge that crosses the river over there'), the
other pertains to the physical composition that makes every thing unique (the
bridge made of _those_ specific fibers).

It'd be like claiming the different people that inhabit the same house over
the span of 100 years are all the same people, because they're all humans.
They're all people, and they all inhabited the house ('the people in that
house'), but they in fact possess different unique identity.

~~~
crygin
This is like the Platonic HN comment. Person hears about an interesting
problem in another field (yeah, the ship of Theseus is actually interesting.
That's why people still discuss it), asserts the solution after having thought
about it for two minutes, then provides a useless analogy. Good work, you
solved the problem! All those philosophers can quit their adjunct
professorships and go bootstrap some social web companies now.

~~~
Avshalom
...no, the point was that it wasn't a ship of theseus situation.

------
beloch
In some areas, such as agriculture, modern technology still has much to learn
from the achievements of the Incas. The amount of land under cultivation in
the Andes is still a fraction of what it once was.

~~~
claudius
> The amount of land under cultivation in the Andes is still a fraction of
> what it once was.

And yet I haven’t heard of famines in the past few years – which, given
Europe’s history before ‘modern technology’ came along, should happen every
now and then with the older methods.

Certainly modern agriculture does have some drawbacks, and with an appropriate
set of priorities, you can probably claim that it is worse than what we had
200 years ago, but it works surprisingly well at feeding seven billion people
while at the same time only requiring a tiny fraction of said seven billion
people to actually be employed in agriculture.

------
Surio
Also related, a "living bridge" in India

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongriat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongriat)

~~~
chaitanya
They are quite amazing: [http://www.picturesw.com/2012/08/the-natural-root-
bridges-of...](http://www.picturesw.com/2012/08/the-natural-root-bridges-of-
cherrapunji.html)

------
roel_v
"developing a language of knotted strings known as quipo, which has yet to be
decoded"

Sigh, not this crap again. I bought a book in Arequipa or Cusco back in 2004
or so that described in detail a large amount of quipu that had been found in
the area. Just reading the Wikipedia article would have been enough for this
author to debunk this Incan mythical nonsense. It's pretty widely settled now
that quipu are a system for counting and bookkeeping and is not a writing
system in the sense that it translates words or sounds into written
equivalents. E.g. you had to know that red knots represented mules and yellow
ones baskets of corn (it's obviously much more complex than this). It's still
a writing system and indubitably very useful and ingenious for and of the
Incans, but we do know a bunch about it.

------
prewett
I read that as "made entirely of glass" and was imagining a rope bridge made
out of glass strands. Could be pretty cool at night if the strands were light
pipes and you lit up the ends...

~~~
hrjet
Same here. And the mention of "fibre" in the article made me think along the
same lines.

If I hadn't misread I would have been impressed by the bridge.

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aarondf
But how did they string the bridge across the _first_ time?

~~~
jlgreco
Start by pulling across a string (with an arrow, or by climbing over to the
other side with it). Use that string to pull over a cord, use that cord to
pull over a rope, use that rope to pull over a bridge.

~~~
chiph
Modern suspension bridges are started that same exact way.

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riemannzeta
The Bridge of San Luis Rey might be my favorite novel.

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ryan-allen
I thought Incan only looked after domain names?

