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Deep-Site-8326 t1_j1hpf0i wrote

How tf didn't Aztecs get to discover steeeeel

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joeri1505 t1_j1hqyfg wrote

"Yo bro, i have these funny red rocks here Want to start a 1500c fire and see if it does anything interesting?"

How tf did we ever discover that stuf???

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Lord0fHats t1_j1ioprt wrote

I’ll look for it but there’s a fantastic post right here on reddit explaining how pottery leads to metal working in a very simple and logical progression.

TLDR; pottery processes can produce copper slag. Once people started using that they just gained more knowledge about metal.

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joeri1505 t1_j1ips2v wrote

Yeah i somewhat know that theory and it makes sense But you have to see how much has to go right in that process.

The pottery clay just happens to contain metals. That's just luck. The metals melt at a low temperature, luck People figure out how to recognize metal ores Refining ore Building kilns that can get hot enough Adding carbon to make steel from iron.

Its similar to how the Chinese just never really figured out how to make clear glass. Causing them to never develop glasses

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Type31971 t1_j1i03oo wrote

Even more importantly, why didn’t the Americas learn to properly utilize the wheel? They knew how to use wheels for milling grain, but didn’t apply it further.

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anarchysquid t1_j1i8bga wrote

There's two* main areas in the Americas that had dense urban cultures, Mesoamerica and Peru. Both areas are generally mountainous, with sharp changes in elevation, where wheels wouldn't be bery useful. In addition, Mesoamerica didn't have any large domesticated animals to pull carts, and Peru had llamas, which are fairly dainty and weak. Between the lack of draft animals and the steep terrain, there just wasn't a good use for the wheel.

*there was also the Mississppians, but we don't know a lot about their culture. One can imagine the lack of draft animals was an issue, even if the terrain was flatter.

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LateInTheAfternoon t1_j1iaiv6 wrote

>Both areas are generally mountainous

No, they're not. A lot of lowlands, plains and broad valleys and many cities were built by the coasts (especially far away from any mountains in the case of Peru).

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anarchysquid t1_j1idu9e wrote

So here is a map of the valley of Mexico, before Lake Texcoco was drained. As you can see, there are flat areas, especially along the lakeshore, but the valley is lined with hills and there are even hills between major population centers. This isn't to say there are no flat areas, but elevation is a major concern for any significant travel distance.

Here is a map of the Incan Empire. Notice the terrain between major population centers like Cuzco and La Paz or Lima? Again, there are places where a wheeled cart would have helped, but overall the land is quite mountainous.

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LateInTheAfternoon t1_j1iftaz wrote

I urge you to look on the rest of the maps while you're at it. Take a gander were most pre-Incan cities were located as well. You'll soon find why "generally" was a poorly chosen word which no cherrypicked examples will change.

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Type31971 t1_j1ic67r wrote

Draft animals aren’t a necessity to make the wheel useful for transportation. If anything it’d make weaker animals more useful, and wheeled carts being drawn by humans have existed in Europe and Asia for centuries, if not millennia.

The need for tight turning ability in cities would have made the wheel a welcome addition in mesomerica, and the reduced workload going up inclines with wheels is superior to non-wheeled.

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anarchysquid t1_j1ifi5c wrote

Whats your alternative theory?

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Type31971 t1_j1ilibh wrote

The Americas were hit and miss. They pioneered the zero in mathematics while large swaths were no farther advanced than the Stone Age when Europeans showed up on their doorstep. Saying they lacked inventiveness is a stretch, but at the same time having access to the wheel but not taking this basic technology to its logical conclusion is maddening

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TheBattler t1_j1jorq0 wrote

>wheeled carts being drawn by humans have existed in Europe and Asia for centuries, if not millennia.

Okay but that doesn't matter when our earliest archaeological evidence for carts is often tied to cattle; the Brononice pot abstractly depicts a wagon and was found alongside the remains of an auroch. Tripolye culture toy bull is literally a bull on wheels. Evidence for carts and wagons appear in present-day Ukraine just after the introduction of cattle.

It's a boring answer but for whatever reason, humans didn't think they needed a cart until they had some other poor animal to drag it around.

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Type31971 t1_j1jxt69 wrote

Art of cattle pulling a cart doesn’t mean human-pulled carts weren’t developed at the same time or earlier. On top of that there’s no evidence that mesoamerican cultures stopped developing wheeled carts because of an absence of large domesticated draft animals. The Maya didn’t shrug their shoulders and say “This could be awesome, if only… oh well”

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TheBattler t1_j1k3y8f wrote

Yes, everybody on this sub knows the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence...but this is to our best current knowledge.

>On top of that there’s no evidence that mesoamerican cultures stopped developing wheeled carts because of an absence of large domesticated draft animals.

If that's your standard for why they didn't develop wheeled carts, you'll basically never have a satisfactory answer. It's next to impossible to prove a negative using archaeology.

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Type31971 t1_j1k8tx2 wrote

There is never gonna be a satisfactory answer. As I said before, large swaths of the Americas were still Stone Age societies when Europeans made contact… You’d think all of continental humanity would have advanced beyond that point

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Lord0fHats t1_j1ip5xp wrote

We’ve found toys in west Mexico that are wheeled. They at some point at least did figure it out. As for why it never caught on, common guesses are a lack of draft animals, rough terrain, and more availability of navigable waterways.

Also the possibility that what was being traded didn’t incentivize heavy loads. Most cultures in the Americas were self-sufficient for food. Their currency wasn’t based in valuable metals. Most trade was focused on finished goods and wares, not bulk raw materials.

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Type31971 t1_j1ipg5k wrote

This has already been gone over…

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Lord0fHats t1_j1iobk8 wrote

It’s a two fold question.

First; the neighboring Tarascan civilization had metal working. In all of meso-American the western side of Mexico is the only part where we find metallurgy being practiced locally. They likely imported this know from South America at some point.

It had been present in West Mexico for more than a thousand years. So, why didn’t the rest of Meso-America adopt it?

We don’t know but we can make some logical guesses.

The first is that there were no known sources of copper. Early metal working derived as a result of pottery. The process of glazing and finishing pottery can produce copper slag. So its an easy progression that pottery leads to metalworking.

Problem is that there isn’t a lot of copper to be found in the soil or pottery styles of the region so they never made the leap.

But they were adjacent to metal workers for centuries. The Aztec were even at war with the Tarascans.

And they weren’t losing.

So here we come to obsidian. Obsidian is a useful rock. Its brittle but it can hold a very sharp edge. It’ll break sure… but so what? Just get more obsidian and make a new edge.

We see a similar pattern int he near east. There were groups slow to adopt metal tools because stone tools are simple. You didn’t need an artisan to make or fix them. They’re cheaper. Anyone can make a basic stone tool.

And that’s probably why the Aztecs didn’t switch to bronze. Obsidian’s general ease of use and practicality was more valuable to them. They didn’t see the advantages si they didn’t adopt copper. Don’t adopt copper you don’t get bronze. Iron takes more skill to work and experience working iron leads to steel.

This is a fairly consistent global pattern but it was stalled in Meso-American by a lack of metal sources and the many uses and ease of use of obsidian.

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Norumbega-GameMaster t1_j1hya9d wrote

I think the implication of your question is how is it that some developed this metallurgy when others did not?

This is a question that history can't answer. History can't even tell us why or how those that did develop steel learned how to do it. These questions are more of a metaphysical nature. Any attempt to answer them through history is going to be speculation and conjecture at best.

So there are reasons why I believe that some developed these technologies and others did not, but they are reasons based in my religious beliefs not in historical accounts.

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Lord0fHats t1_j1im26b wrote

We sort of can but it involves guessing.

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Norumbega-GameMaster t1_j1j2t4n wrote

As I said, speculation and conjecture at best. History simply can't answer why. Who, what, and where can generally be answered fairly easily. When and how can be answered relatively accurately in the more recent history; what the further back you go the harder these questions are to answer. The question of why is simply not addressed in history and can't be.

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