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03-Sep-1983
Dear Cecil:
Answer this one. We're always fascinated by reports of ancient cultures like the Incas who
performed great feats of civilization despite the fact the wheel was unknown to them. How
could a halfway with-it civilization not invent the wheel? Rocks roll. Lightning knocks
down trees and the trunks roll. Skulls roll. It must have been the axle, specifically,
that they didn't invent, but it shouldn't take Isaac Newton to think of an axle. Was there
some cultural commitment to dragging litters and hoisting loads on beasts of burden (and
slaves) that inoculated these civilizations against the concept of wheels? --Eddie Yuhas
and Al Brazle, Chicago
Cecil replies:
Yuhas and Brazle, huh? Boy, we don't get too many retired Cardinals pitchers writing in to
the Straight Dope. Glad to see you guys are still keeping your minds occupied.
Now, then: let's not be too critical of the Incas. First of all, we note a peculiar
pattern here. It wasn't just the Incas who failed to invent the wheel; every other
civilization in the New World (with one exception, which we'll get to in a minute) managed
to overlook it as well. For that matter, the ancient Americans also had to struggle along
without the true arch, the cart, the plow, the potter's wheel, the bellows, glass, iron,
and stringed instruments. But it's unfair to attribute this sorry technological record to
either lack of IQ or (as far as the wheel was concerned) an infatuation with transport via
brute strength. The fact is that most civilizations in the Old World didn't invent the
wheel either--instead, they borrowed it from some other culture. The wheel appears to have
been first used in Sumer in the Middle East around 3500 BC, whence it spread across
Europe, Asia, and North Africa. It didn't arrive in Britain until 500 BC. This orderly
diffusion pattern makes it conceivable that all the wheels in use today are directly
descended from the invention of a single gifted individual--an individual, however, who
was such a dope that he failed to sign his name on the patent application, thus assuring
his (or her) eternal anonymity. We might therefore attribute Inca wheellessness to the
absence of a pre-Columbian Thomas Edison.
But there are other factors involved. The principle of rotary motion, as you point out, is
pretty obvious, and was well known throughout the New World as well as the Old. The Incas,
for instance, are thought to have used wooden rollers to haul the giant stones they used
to build their cities. Unfortunately, the New World suffered from a conspicuous scarcity
of draft animals. The only beast of burden known in the Americas was the llama, a delicate
critter restricted to certain parts of the Andes, which was used solely as a pack animal.
Without draft animals you cannot do extensive hauling with sledges, and without sledges it
will never occur to you that the wheel would be a handy thing to have. When the Incas had
to transport heavy objects, they relied on manpower, often to the considerable sorrow of
the men doing the powering (some 3,000 of 20,000 workers died dragging one particularly
massive stone, according to chronicles). Consequently heavy hauling in the New World was
restricted to the occasional special project. The Sumerians, on the other hand, had
considerable experience with what we might call regularly scheduled sledge service, and
even so it took them 2,000 years of fumbling before the idea of the wheel finally dawned.
Not that it just popped out of the blue. 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, and from there it's pretty much a straight shot to the Chevy Impala.
But you wanted to know about that exception I mentioned. The wheel evidently was familiar
to the ancient Mexicans, the only known instance of its having been invented independently
of the Sumerian version. Unfortunately, it apparently never occurred to anyone at the time
that wheels had any practical application, and their use was confined to little clay
gadgets that are thought to be either toys or cult objects. Another example of good
technology gone to waste. Reminds me of Pac-Man.
--CECIL ADAMS
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