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this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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I like hi ow they know where the wheel was invented when nobody really does. And it was probably invented multiple times independently of each other. But nobody knows since it was so long ago.
It was. There's at least some evidence that the Inca invented the wheel independently, but its application was largely limited to children's toys IIRC.
Wheels are generally only an improvement over carrying stuff (including with pack animals) when you need to move across fairly flat and solid surfaces. The mountains of Peru, being extremely not flat, turned out to be a poor environment for early wheels (slight error here, see FlyingSquid below)
Same reason West Africa adopted and then abandoned the wheel. Turns out that in a lot of the environments there, camels did the job better once we figured out how to domesticate them
What I think is interesting is that those civilizations also didn't develop pottery wheels mill wheels, which makes me wonder if the wheel as transport is necessary to develop those technologies.
Also interesting to me is that the wheelbarrow was invented thousands of years after the wheel. You do need to invent an axle for a wheelbarrow to exist, but you would still think they would have been obvious technology. Nope, it was invented in first century BCE China.
That said, the person you replied to was slightly off. It wasn't the Incas, it was Mesoamericans. People like the Mayans. You were still correct though, it had no utility as transport in a jungle environment either.
Ahh thank you, I actually also misremembered which bit of the Americas that story was from. I think I had the Inca road network in mind.
The wheel is just a fad anyways
To say that it was invented in such place and time only means that we have evidence that a wheel was invented in that place and time. It doesn't mean that it wasn't invented elsewhere independently.
Hell it's still happening. I invented it just a couple weeks ago! And nobody helped me!
I hope it turned out better than your culinary endeavors
The only thing I’m worse at than cooking is everything else.
Depends on your definition of "wheel". For example, any ancient perfectly round pottery was made using a pottery wheel (primitive or not). Otherwise, how would you do it?
That's how we know the ancient Sumerians were using pottery wheels as early as 3250 BCE (because we found perfectly round pottery that's that old):
https://www.colorado.edu/classics/2018/06/15/potters-wheel#:~:text=The%20potter's%20wheel%20is%20an,(2).