Type31971 t1_j1jxt69 wrote on December 24, 2022 at 11:29 PM

Reply to comment by TheBattler in Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

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”

TheBattler t1_j1k3y8f wrote on December 25, 2022 at 12:20 AM

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.

Type31971 t1_j1k8tx2 wrote on December 25, 2022 at 1:03 AM

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