Why was the wheel not invented in Africa?

[bmk1245]

Good question.

[pellinore]

Interesting question. Probably because they had no need for it, as this article suggests. A similar question is: Why did Britain lead the World in inventiveness during the Industrial Revolution?

Current explanations of why the Aztecs, Incas, Maya, and Native Americans lacked wheels focus not on the knowledge of how to create them — which they clearly possessed — but on practicality. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, and ancient Americans just didn’t have the same need for wheeled vehicles that Eurasians did. Why? One major reason is that the continent was devoid of creatures strong enough to pull them. After all, horses, cows, and oxen crossed the Atlantic along with the wheel itself.

Why the Aztecs, Inca, and Maya never invented the wheel - Big Think

Edited September 10 by pellinore

[Golden Duck]

18 hours ago, bmk1245 said:

Good question.

You've posted this in the News forum, so do you have an answer?

The History Debunked channel promotes itself with:

Quote

For all too many people, history consists of no more than a set of familiar and well-worn stories such as the incompetence of First World War British generals, the heroic struggle of the suffragettes and the saintly devotion to duty of Florence Nightingale. We seldom stop to ask ourselves if Florence Nightingale actually saved any lives or whether the suffragettes hindered or helped women to gain the vote. In this channel, Simon Webb, author of many books of popular history, examines some of our favorite historical characters and incidents, looking at the truth behind the myths. We learn, for example, that Magna Carta has nothing to do with habeus corpus or the so-called 'British Values' and that slavers from Africa were raiding England at least half a century before the English began taking slaves from Africa. This channel is for anybody who has ever questioned the stories which they learned during history lessons at school.

If you were indeed seeking a critical response you would have posted this in the Alternative History forum.

@Saru, can this be moved?

Edited September 11 by Saru
Removed personal remark

[bmk1245]

17 hours ago, Golden Duck said:

You've posted this in the News forum, so do you have an answer?

The History Debunked channel promotes itself with:

If you were indeed seeking a critical response you would have posted this in the Alternative History forum.

@Saru, can this be moved?

if thats alternative history, I'm sure you can refute his claims with ease.

[WVK]

20 hours ago, pellinore said:

Interesting question. Probably because they had no need for it, as this article suggests. A similar question is: Why did Britain lead the World in inventiveness during the Industrial Revolution?

Current explanations of why the Aztecs, Incas, Maya, and Native Americans lacked wheels focus not on the knowledge of how to create them — which they clearly possessed — but on practicality. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, and ancient Americans just didn’t have the same need for wheeled vehicles that Eurasians did. Why? One major reason is that the continent was devoid of creatures strong enough to pull them. After all, horses, cows, and oxen crossed the Atlantic along with the wheel itself.

Why the Aztecs, Inca, and Maya never invented the wheel - Big Think

MESOAMERICAN WHEELED TOYS

https://uncoveredhistory.com/mesoamerica/wheeled-toys/

[bmk1245]

20 hours ago, pellinore said:

Interesting question. Probably because they had no need for it, as this article suggests. A similar question is: Why did Britain lead the World in inventiveness during the Industrial Revolution?

Current explanations of why the Aztecs, Incas, Maya, and Native Americans lacked wheels focus not on the knowledge of how to create them — which they clearly possessed — but on practicality. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, and ancient Americans just didn’t have the same need for wheeled vehicles that Eurasians did. Why? One major reason is that the continent was devoid of creatures strong enough to pull them. After all, horses, cows, and oxen crossed the Atlantic along with the wheel itself.

Why the Aztecs, Inca, and Maya never invented the wheel - Big Think

Well, slaves (in pre-colonial Americas) were kinda considered... animals... Five men can drag wheeled cart with stones...

[bmk1245]

12 minutes ago, WVK said:

MESOAMERICAN WHEELED TOYS

https://uncoveredhistory.com/mesoamerica/wheeled-toys/

"The majority of examples that exist today are thought to have been made in the Early Post Classic Era (900AD-1250AD), though some do come from the earlier Classic Era (200AD-900AD). "

"Thought to have been made", or "have been made". Huge difference.

[Abramelin]

Why did the Europeans not invent explosives?

And why did the Chinese?

We can continue for hours like that.

Why did the Mohenjo Daro civilization invent a sewer system, and why were Europeans up until a few centuries ago still crapping from their windows or directly on the street?

Edited September 11 by Abramelin

[Abramelin]

1 hour ago, Abramelin said:

Why did the Europeans not invent explosives?

And why did the Chinese?

We can continue for hours like that.

Why did the Mohenjo Daro civilization invent a sewer system, and why were Europeans up until a few centuries ago still crapping from their windows or directly on the street?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_Civilisation

[+joc]

1 hour ago, Abramelin said:

Why did the Mohenjo Daro civilization invent a sewer system, and why were Europeans up until a few centuries ago still crapping from their windows or directly on the street?

And why does America, after creating massive sewer system networks, allow homeless people to crap on the street?  

 

[Piney]

On 9/10/2023 at 9:44 AM, bmk1245 said:

Good question.

Simon Webb is a racist ...... 

[Piney]

5 hours ago, Abramelin said:

Why did the Europeans not invent explosives?

And why did the Chinese?

We can continue for hours like that.

Why did the Mohenjo Daro civilization invent a sewer system, and why were Europeans up until a few centuries ago still crapping from their windows or directly on the street?

Romans had sewers until Christianity......the irony....

[DieChecker]

Yeah, I've watched a number of this guys videos in the past, supposedly espousing historical wisdom. But, I'd tend to agree he's more than a bit of an Anglophile. If not an outright racist. Seems to be in a 19th century thought pattern, and probably believes the British Empire was humanities crowning achievement.

I'll pass on this video.

Edited September 12 by DieChecker

[+ouija ouija]

15 hours ago, Piney said:

Simon Webb is a racist ...... 

I don't believe he is (and I've watched a lot of his videos). I think a lot of people don't properly listen to what he says and also don't ask themselves 'is there any truth in what he is saying?' . . . they go straight to racist-headless-chicken mode! I think he speaks a lot of truth and is an honest man.

11 hours ago, DieChecker said:

Yeah, I've watched a number of this guys videos in the past, supposedly espousing historical wisdom. But, I'd tend to agree he's more than a bit of an Anglophile. If not an outright racist. Seems to be in a 19th century thought pattern, and probably believes the British Empire was humanities crowning achievement.

I'll pass on this video.

What is wrong with being an Anglophile . . . loving the country of his birth? He is not a racist and if you think he is then you haven't listened carefully to what he says . . . I mean listen really carefully, in a neutral frame of mind.

(The video is only just over 4mns long ).

[Piney]

23 minutes ago, ouija ouija said:

I don't believe he is (and I've watched a lot of his videos). I think a lot of people don't properly listen to what he says and also don't ask themselves 'is there any truth in what he is saying?' . . . they go straight to racist-headless-chicken mode! I think he speaks a lot of truth and is an honest man.

What is wrong with being an Anglophile . . . loving the country of his birth? He is not a racist and if you think he is then you haven't listened carefully to what he says . . . I mean listen really carefully, in a neutral frame of mind.

(The video is only just over 4mns long ).

He has no understanding of what kind of thought processes it takes to be a sucessful hunter-gather/agroforester or the fact that nomads perfected advanced metallurgical and medical techniques also developing the spoked wheel basing his assumptions on a culture's ability to stack rocks (build) making them advanced. 

He also doesn't understand that the cart was probably invented by non Indo-European nomads. Not city builders. 

In a nutshell.. He's a poorly educated schmuck. 

[+ouija ouija]

18 minutes ago, Piney said:

He has no understanding of what kind of thought processes it takes to be a sucessful hunter-gather/agroforester or the fact that nomads perfected advanced metallurgical and medical techniques also developing the spoked wheel basing his assumptions on a culture's ability to stack rocks (build) making them advanced. 

He also doesn't understand that the cart was probably invented by non Indo-European nomads. Not city builders. 

In a nutshell.. He's a poorly educated schmuck. 

People have different opinions on what defines 'success', I guess.

[Piney]

17 minutes ago, ouija ouija said:

People have different opinions on what defines 'success', I guess.

There is no opinion. Each culture has it's own successes and advanced in it's own way.

Agricultural scientists are still trying to figure out the advanced agroforestry techniques of certain North American tribes.

And we did it without a wheel. Which isn't even a measure of advancement. Just a measure of Eurocentrism.

[Robotic Jew]

20 hours ago, joc said:

And why does America, after creating massive sewer system networks, allow homeless people to crap on the street?  

 

And then weigh it!

[Thanos5150]

1 hour ago, Piney said:

He also doesn't understand that the cart was probably invented by non Indo-European nomads. Not city builders. 

At least you are saying "probably" now. As said to you 3yrs ago and every other time you say this:

This is by no means "fact", if correct at all, given that the wheel appears almost simultaneously across parts of Europe and the Near East coupled with the inherent uncertainties of absolute and/or relative dates which can be off by centuries either which way. The fact is no one is exactly sure where it was "invented" which is where the overwhelming majority of scholarship has left it at. And part of this argument it originates with PIE cultures is a linguistical one which its application as a dating method is speculative at best. 

And the Cucuteni–Trypillian culture, which is where these early examples were found, were hardly "nomads" with monumental architecture and several urban centers ("mega-sites") with upwards of 15,000 inhabitants predating the wheel finds (miniature models) by several centuries. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Also see here: #182. And here: #188

But you keep saying it anyways brother despite not only is it not a "fact" but not even "probably" either. 

Edited September 12 by Thanos5150

[Thanos5150]

1 hour ago, Piney said:

He has no understanding of what kind of thought processes it takes to be a sucessful hunter-gather/agroforester or the fact that nomads perfected advanced metallurgical and medical techniques also developing the spoked wheel basing his assumptions on a culture's ability to stack rocks (build) making them advanced. 

He also doesn't understand that the cart was probably invented by non Indo-European nomads. Not city builders. 

In a nutshell.. He's a poorly educated schmuck. 

Missed this part. Nope, not the spoked wheel either.

Despite the considerable increase in archaeological and absolute chronological data concerning the development of early horse-drawn chariots in the Central Eurasian Steppe region, the heated debate about the chariots’ place of origin, their diffusion or even the presence of evidence for the technological capability to build functioning chariots in the Eastern European Middle Bronze Age is ongoing. 

Chariots in the Eurasian Steppe: a Bayesian approach to the emergence of horse-drawn transport in the early second millennium BC

The Use of Wagons (eriqqum) in Ancient Anatolia According to Text from Kültepe

And again, no different for the spoked wheel, the people were not nomads. The oldest depictions of the region you are reffering to are found in Kultepe which was a city of several thousand people. 

Edited September 12 by Thanos5150

[Piney]

1 hour ago, Thanos5150 said:

At least you are saying "probably" now. As said to you 3yrs ago and every other time you say this:

This is by no means "fact", if correct at all, given that the wheel appears almost simultaneously across parts of Europe and the Near East coupled with the inherent uncertainties of absolute and/or relative dates which can be off by centuries either which way. The fact is no one is exactly sure where it was "invented" which is where the overwhelming majority of scholarship has left it at. And part of this argument it originates with PIE cultures is a linguistical one which its application as a dating method is speculative at best. 

And the Cucuteni–Trypillian culture, which is where these early examples were found, were hardly "nomads" with monumental architecture and several urban centers ("mega-sites") with upwards of 15,000 inhabitants predating the wheel finds (miniature models) by several centuries. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Also see here: #182. And here: #188

But you keep saying it anyways brother despite not only is it not a "fact" but not even "probably" either. 

I was going by the Bronocice pot again. My bad.

They still weren't ****ing German though. 

55 minutes ago, Thanos5150 said:

Missed this part. Nope, not the spoked wheel either.

Despite the considerable increase in archaeological and absolute chronological data concerning the development of early horse-drawn chariots in the Central Eurasian Steppe region, the heated debate about the chariots’ place of origin, their diffusion or even the presence of evidence for the technological capability to build functioning chariots in the Eastern European Middle Bronze Age is ongoing. 

Chariots in the Eurasian Steppe: a Bayesian approach to the emergence of horse-drawn transport in the early second millennium BC

The Use of Wagons (eriqqum) in Ancient Anatolia According to Text from Kültepe

And again, no different for the spoked wheel, the people were not nomads. The oldest depictions of the region you are reffering to are found in Kultepe which was a city of several thousand people. 

The Sintashta who brought it there were originally.

[The Puzzler]

The same reason Australian indigenous people didn’t invent the bow.

The underlying knowledge didn’t come to them.

However, mythology in fact does give the invention of the quadriga, a four wheeled chariot to Africa.

[Piney]

15 minutes ago, The Puzzler said:

The same reason Australian indigenous people didn’t invent the bow.

The underlying knowledge didn’t come to them.

However, mythology in fact does give the invention of the quadriga, a four wheeled chariot to Africa.

The woomera has more power than a bow. So it wasn't necessary.

The Aztecs stuck with the atlatl along with the bow for the same reason. 

[The Puzzler]

2 minutes ago, Piney said:

The woomera has more power than a bow. So it wasn't necessary.

The Aztecs stuck with the atlatl along with the bow for the same reason. 

That’s true. It was not necessary. Probably like the wheel in Africa.

[Piney]

16 minutes ago, The Puzzler said:

That’s true. It was not necessary. Probably like the wheel in Africa.

Exactly, why make things harder.