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A comment on Why did the peoples of the New World fail to invent the wheel?.

Re:Why did the peoples of the New World fail to invent the w... by pookleblinky on Sunday May 17, 2009 @09:34AM (#613372)
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!"

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Re:Why did the peoples of the New World fail to invent the w... by iron_ball on Sunday May 17, 2009 @11:05AM (#613465)
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.
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Re:Why did the peoples of the New World fail to invent the w... by pookleblinky on Sunday May 17, 2009 @11:10AM (#613471)
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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Re:Why did the peoples of the New World fail to invent the w... by Angostura on Sunday May 17, 2009 @02:44PM (#613757)
I thought Guns Germs & Steel was an excellent book.

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

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Re:Why did the peoples of the New World fail to invent the w... by stcredzero on Sunday May 17, 2009 @03:02PM (#613784)
In mountainous, rocky terrain? Hike much? There's a reason why backpacks are used on hikes, and not wheelbarrows.
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Re:Why did the peoples of the New World fail to invent the w... by r7000 on Sunday May 17, 2009 @05:40PM (#613972)
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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Re:Why did the peoples of the New World fail to invent the w... by Angostura on Thursday May 21, 2009 @02:36PM (#620884)
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).
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Re:Why did the peoples of the New World fail to invent the w... by Tichy on Sunday May 17, 2009 @12:13PM (#613557)
Wheels alone don't do much good. You also need roads. I could imagine those where not very common in the jungle and the mud. (Might be that in some places, like deserts, roads are not necessary, but still).
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