
Why did the peoples of the New World fail to invent the wheel? - soundsop
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/223/why-did-the-peoples-of-the-new-world-fail-to-invent-the-wheel
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10ren
_The general sequence of friction-reducing inventions is thought to have been
runners, rollers, rollers held in place by guides, rollers held in place by
guides and thickened on the ends to make them roll straighter, the wheel and
axle_

How to grow a wheel - it's not how smart you are, it's how often you iterate.

~~~
chaosmachine
I wonder if anyone ever said "There's no reason to reinvent the roller".

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pookleblinky
Jared Diamond in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" argued rather persuasively that the
New World did not develop the (larger than toy-sized) wheel because humans had
killed off all the large animals capable of being domesticated enough to be
harnessed to said wheels other than fellow humans.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel>

From the wiki: "Eurasia as a whole domesticated 13 species of large animals
(over 100lb / 44 kg); South America just one (counting the llama and alpaca as
breeds within the same species); the rest of the world none at all."

It would seem rather pointless to make a cart with wheels and all, just to
pull it yourself. Your neighbors would laugh at your claims of "reducing labor
via my remarkable time-saving invention on par with the latest SCRUM practices
or even ShamWOW!"

~~~
iron_ball
I don't place much stock in the idea that the wheel/axle concept is useless
without draft animals. Any society that hauls food or supplies will get a LOT
of mileage out of a simple wheelbarrow. And that's as easy as making one
wheel, a short axle, two forked sticks, and a basket. Easy but not at all
obvious, of course.

~~~
pookleblinky
Jared Diamond mentions something interesting. He claims that in the
mountainous, llama-ridden regions where wheels are largely useless, the people
had already invented wheels. But they used them as toys for children.

In the lowlands less than 100 miles away, ideal terrain for wheeled
conveyances, they had no llamas. They also had wheels, albeit tiny wheels
attached to toys.

It wasn't that they were astonishingly stupid to not understand the wheel-
they had wheels, for their toys. It was, instead, that they had no other use
for it.

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Angostura
I thought Guns Germs & Steel was an excellent book.

... and yet, and yet - the wheelbarrow is an extremely useful machine.

~~~
stcredzero
In mountainous, rocky terrain? Hike much? There's a reason why backpacks are
used on hikes, and not wheelbarrows.

~~~
r7000
Indeed. The travois (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travois>) was invented in
the Americas and was widely used even after the introduction of the wheel
post-contact (in the fur trade for example) where no reliable roads existed.

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stcredzero
The question for this millennium will be, "Why did peoples of the New World
fail to get good broadband?"

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nazgulnarsil
because they didn't have roads?the only people I would expect to invent wheels
are agrarian plains dwellers (agrarian society affords more uses for
transporting food and commodities)

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tokenadult
"The fact is that most civilizations in the Old World didn't invent the wheel
either--instead, they borrowed it from some other culture."

That's the essential point. Much of the Old World was a single area for long-
distance trade and conquest, and the chariot in particular spread the idea of
horse-drawn wheeled vehicles to many places where that technology was not
invented, but rather adopted from invading peoples.

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DanielBMarkham
If I'm understanding the first part of the answer, he's sayin the wheel was
not invented in the New World because there was no inventor of the wheel in
the New World.

Kind of sounds like some of the answers I used to put on extra credit sections
of tests when I wasn't sure : )

I think the more interesting and pertinent question, which he barely touched
on, is _why do some societies invent and adopt things and put them to all
kinds of use while other societies either don't invent them or invent them
without ever adapting and applying them to their full potential?_

Taking off my PC hat, I think this probably describes the difference between a
stagnant civilization and a dynamic one. (Bet I'll get the downmods for that
one!)

~~~
asciilifeform
> why do some societies invent and adopt things and put them to all kinds of
> use while other societies either don't invent them or invent them without
> ever adapting and applying them

This may also be why:

<http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/PSEUDOSC/WhyAntiInt.htm>

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rman666
They almost invented the wheel when they invented the Mayan calendar. It's a
wheel, but instead of a hole in the center being used for an axle, they put
the head of one of the winners/loosers of those court bat games. So close but
yet so far. See
[http://crankyphoneguy.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/mayancalan...](http://crankyphoneguy.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/mayancalanderinsidepicture1.jpg).
That's my theory, anyway.

~~~
stcredzero
So it would've worked if the Mayans were a lot taller, axially symmetric, and
stiffer under rigor mortis?

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Aron
"some 3,000 of 20,000 workers died dragging one particularly massive stone,
according to chronicles"

Likely the chieftan was quite fond of telling about how many people died to
move his rock. If you can do dumb shit, and stay chief, you must be a powerful
chief indeed.

Which is to assert that one also needs the right motives before invention.

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nopassrecover
I thought it was to do with terrain

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GrandMasterBirt
The wheel in itself isn't anything grand. Its just a circular object which is
quite useless on it's own.

You must invent 2 wheels, an axle and something to attach them to. Thus you
have a use for the wheel as a starting point.

However wheels do not allow you to haul large super-heavy blocks for pyramid
construction, you need a bunch of wooden sticks and manpower at best.

So yea a wheel was quite a unique invention. I am willing to bet 3000 years
from now if humans still exist, someone will be saying "yea I can't believe
people lived without this electricity thing... its so damn obvious! A two-year
old can invent it."

~~~
yummyfajitas
A one-wheeled vehicle is hardly useless on it's own.

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Wheelbarr...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Wheelbarrow.jpg)

~~~
gchpaco
Still needs an axle, though, and making those things out of wood is
surprisingly difficult.

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Ardit20
I was expecting an answer to sort of emphasise the cliché of no need to
reinvent the wheel just work within it. We as people tend to stick with what
we have and make it better rather than scratch it all together and start anew,
hence perhaps those ancient civilisations came up with something else which
performed the same function.

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uggedal
One person, several people.

~~~
albertni
If you take each group of people in the New World to be an item, then the
title is essentially saying "why didn't the various different groups of people
in the New World invent the wheel" - it's trying to emphasize that each of
group of people is actually being considered a singular entity. Whether or not
this is actually grammatically correct, I don't know, though intuitively it
seems quite reasonable to me (which is generally a good first approximation of
grammatical accuracy for native speakers).

~~~
johnnybgoode
It's correct.

