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chainmailbill t1_jb5z826 wrote

Reply to comment by NautilusPanda in Humans Started Riding Horses 5,000 Years Ago, New Evidence Suggests by geoxol

Also without tool metallurgy or a practical wheel and axle.

They worked gold, and they had little wheeled toys for kids, but they never figured out copper/bronze/iron or wheeled vehicles.

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Morphized t1_jb66g66 wrote

I don't think wheels would have been very useful in a staircase-based society

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chainmailbill t1_jb66k3a wrote

I agree, which is why they were never developed. There was no need, due to the twisty mountain paths and thick jungle.

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Lajinn5 t1_jb6gbm4 wrote

Lack of large domesticated animals is also a fairly big factor. A big cart or wagon is great when you have creatures like horses or bulls, combined with staircases and terrain though? No big reason to make them

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walruskingmike t1_jb6m7jl wrote

There was copper working near the Great Lakes for a while, but it wasn't used to make very many tools; it was largely used like a precious metal.

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LeGama t1_jb6z3df wrote

Similar fun fact, the bow has been used for thousands of years for hunting and war, but the far more efficient compound bow was invented after the nuke.

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hucktard t1_jbb3b3z wrote

People have been mining and using copper in the Americas for like 8000 years though.

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chainmailbill t1_jbb845r wrote

I should have been more specific when I said metallurgy; I’m talking about turning ore to metal via smelting, and then alloying those metals with other metals to make useable materials for tools and weapons.

There’s no evidence that smelting existed in any capacity in the precolombian Americas.

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hucktard t1_jbcsih2 wrote

Yeah, sorry to be so pedantic. I recently learned that fact about copper mining in North America and it blew my mind a little so I had to comment.

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