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.
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.
Yes, thanks - I've hiked quite long stretches of the Inca trail... I reckon you can get a wheelbarrow along without too much trouble (pulling it, anyway).
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.