There were wheels in the western hemisphere before the arrival of the europeans, but they were only used for toys. No one seemed to guess that they might be useful. But if they’d had more time....
ETA: perhaps I should cite Diamond here in case anyone wonders where this factoid comes from. It’s from “Guns, Germs, and Steel”.
In particular, Diamond (I believe, though it’s been a while since I read GG&S) argues that wheels have far less obvious utility for vehicles if you don’t have pack animals, and therefore don’t think in terms of animal-powered transport apart from carrying.
A wheelbarrow is a very useful thing. You don’t need an animal to pull a cart in order for it to be worthwhile. I actually think it’s quite mysterious that those civilisations invented the wheel, and then didn’t bother to use it.
I know of no confirmed historical evidence of wheelbarrows being used until around the time of the Peloponnesian War in Greece, and as I understand it they subsequently vanished in the Greco-Roman world for roughly 1600 years until being reintroduced in the Middle Ages. Likewise, wheelbarrows are not evident in Chinese history until the first or second century AD.
So wheelbarrows are an application of wheels, but they’re a much later application of the technology, one that did not arise historically for two to four millennia after the invention of the two or four-wheeled animal-drawn cart.
If we use a broader definition of wheelbarrow as “hand cart,” we have older evidence stretching back at least to the ancient Indus Valley some time in the second or third millennium BC.
But if we stick only to inventions we have historical evidence of, there’s still a gap of thousands of years between the invention of the wheel and the invention of the hand cart throughout Eurasia. The fact that Montezuma’s Aztecs made no use of the wheelbarrow, rickshaw, or hand cart is hardly more remarkable than the fact that Charlemagne’s Franks didn’t, either.
The fact that Montezuma’s Aztecs made no use of the wheelbarrow, rickshaw, or hand cart is hardly more remarkable than the fact that Charlemagne’s Franks didn’t, either.
and:
it’s quite mysterious that those civilisations invented the wheel, and then didn’t bother to use it.
From a social psych standpoint, it’s very interesting: why do people come up with something, then fail to use it in ways that we would consider obvious and beneficial?
I think a lot of it is hidden infrastructure we don’t see, both mental and physical. People need tools to build things, and tools to come up with new ideas: the rules of logic and mathematics may describe the universe, but they are themselves mental tools. Go back to Hellenic civilization and you find a lot of the raw materials for the Industrial Revolution, what was missing? There are a lot of answers to that question: “cheap slaves messing up the economy,” “no precision machining capability,” “no mass consumption of timber, coal, and iron in quantities that force the adoption of industrial methods,” and so on. They all boil down to “something subtle was missing, so that intelligent people didn’t come up with the trick.”
I speculate that one of the most important missing pieces was the habit of looking at everything as a source of potential new tricks for changing the world.
Well, coal was missing… slaves may have been a big factor; it’s probably not coincidental that industrialization started in England and the northeast US and, AFAIK, didn’t spread to the US south until after the civil war—but somebody should fact check this. (BTW, I’d love to see an alternate history in which slavery is gotten rid of by economic incentives and government subsidization of the development of mechanized agriculture. Well, I say I’d love to, but it would probably be as exciting as an Ayn Rand novel.)
… but yes, ways of thinking were probably what was lacking.
One important way of thinking was that, for a very long time before the 18th century, change was seen as bad. The word “innovator” was usually preceded by the word “rash”. There was a great chain of being with peasants at the bottom, God at the top, and the King up near the top; and anybody who wanted to change things was a dangerous revolutionary. The very idea that things could improve here on Earth was vaguely heretical. The idea that economies could grow was not fully in place.
I think it’s also not coincidental that the industrial revolution didn’t start until Adam Smith’s ideas replaced mercantilist thought. Pre-Smith, people assumed that the total amount of wealth on Earth was fixed.
There were wheels in the western hemisphere before the arrival of the europeans, but they were only used for toys. No one seemed to guess that they might be useful. But if they’d had more time....
ETA: perhaps I should cite Diamond here in case anyone wonders where this factoid comes from. It’s from “Guns, Germs, and Steel”.
In particular, Diamond (I believe, though it’s been a while since I read GG&S) argues that wheels have far less obvious utility for vehicles if you don’t have pack animals, and therefore don’t think in terms of animal-powered transport apart from carrying.
A wheelbarrow is a very useful thing. You don’t need an animal to pull a cart in order for it to be worthwhile. I actually think it’s quite mysterious that those civilisations invented the wheel, and then didn’t bother to use it.
I know of no confirmed historical evidence of wheelbarrows being used until around the time of the Peloponnesian War in Greece, and as I understand it they subsequently vanished in the Greco-Roman world for roughly 1600 years until being reintroduced in the Middle Ages. Likewise, wheelbarrows are not evident in Chinese history until the first or second century AD.
So wheelbarrows are an application of wheels, but they’re a much later application of the technology, one that did not arise historically for two to four millennia after the invention of the two or four-wheeled animal-drawn cart.
If we use a broader definition of wheelbarrow as “hand cart,” we have older evidence stretching back at least to the ancient Indus Valley some time in the second or third millennium BC.
But if we stick only to inventions we have historical evidence of, there’s still a gap of thousands of years between the invention of the wheel and the invention of the hand cart throughout Eurasia. The fact that Montezuma’s Aztecs made no use of the wheelbarrow, rickshaw, or hand cart is hardly more remarkable than the fact that Charlemagne’s Franks didn’t, either.
Excellent points, but I think:
and:
are not inconsistent, and are both true.
From a social psych standpoint, it’s very interesting: why do people come up with something, then fail to use it in ways that we would consider obvious and beneficial?
I think a lot of it is hidden infrastructure we don’t see, both mental and physical. People need tools to build things, and tools to come up with new ideas: the rules of logic and mathematics may describe the universe, but they are themselves mental tools. Go back to Hellenic civilization and you find a lot of the raw materials for the Industrial Revolution, what was missing? There are a lot of answers to that question: “cheap slaves messing up the economy,” “no precision machining capability,” “no mass consumption of timber, coal, and iron in quantities that force the adoption of industrial methods,” and so on. They all boil down to “something subtle was missing, so that intelligent people didn’t come up with the trick.”
I speculate that one of the most important missing pieces was the habit of looking at everything as a source of potential new tricks for changing the world.
Well, coal was missing… slaves may have been a big factor; it’s probably not coincidental that industrialization started in England and the northeast US and, AFAIK, didn’t spread to the US south until after the civil war—but somebody should fact check this. (BTW, I’d love to see an alternate history in which slavery is gotten rid of by economic incentives and government subsidization of the development of mechanized agriculture. Well, I say I’d love to, but it would probably be as exciting as an Ayn Rand novel.)
… but yes, ways of thinking were probably what was lacking.
One important way of thinking was that, for a very long time before the 18th century, change was seen as bad. The word “innovator” was usually preceded by the word “rash”. There was a great chain of being with peasants at the bottom, God at the top, and the King up near the top; and anybody who wanted to change things was a dangerous revolutionary. The very idea that things could improve here on Earth was vaguely heretical. The idea that economies could grow was not fully in place.
I think it’s also not coincidental that the industrial revolution didn’t start until Adam Smith’s ideas replaced mercantilist thought. Pre-Smith, people assumed that the total amount of wealth on Earth was fixed.