Posted on 08/17/2005 11:43:12 AM PDT by Between the Lines
I'm not sure the wheel was ever a universal instrument until the great democratic experiment came along. Certainly coaches were available for hire or for passenger transit in 17th-18th century Europe, and the UK rail system brought it to more and more people, but it was the Americans who truly made it universal -- and imperative, first with the railroad and next as personal transportation.
I've seen stats on cart/carriage building c. 1900's, and if I remember correctly it was some 5 million a year. This, of course, fed the dreams of the budding automobilists, who finally made good on it once the motorcar was freed of the demagogues.
There seems to have been built in limits. Cahokia seems to have "flammed out" because their technology could not support so large a concentration of people in their society. They never learned to domestic any meat animals, for instance, Easy to forget what the cow has meant for our civilization.
Unlikely. An earlier estimate is 50 million, which seems more likely.
(Rolls eyes)
It's more complicated than that. Apparently there were two strains floating around, a European one and an American one. Here's more information:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_syphilis/index.html
Tomatoes came to North America from the Spanish.
One theory I've read is that, for whatever reason, metals in the Americas are more difficult to mine, whether due to geology or geography or whatever. So, the native populations were unable to make the step from stone tools to metal tools.
I don't know how accurate that is, to tell you the truth.
It was not that they didn't have technology, it was that their technology was inadequate to support a large urban population for more than a century or so. Maybe it ws because their political structure did not allow for a good organization of a work force.
fascinating-thread-placeholder-mark
The Anasazi didn't really disappear. War and famine (or, more likely, war brought on by famine) forced them out of their original cities, like Chaco Canyon, and up the canyons and up into the cliffs. Later, when things calmed down, they left the cliffs and moved to better locations, becoming the modern Pueblo tribes.
The Mayan concept of zero is an interesting insight into how the Mayans thought about things. Their "Zero" was a set that was "full", therefore you could put nothing more into it, hence it was a ZERO item. Most of us, probably due to cultural and linquistic shaping of our thought processes, would think of zero as an EMPTY set. Perhaps the Mayans thought of the zero as blocking the input of anything else, and hence that "Place" was full of nothing...?
I understand, vis-a-vis animals. But the wheel has vast uses (gears, for ex.) beyond transportation.
Indians, ate horse meat. Ate them to extinction.
The facts are that no horses lived until the spanish returned them. It was then that indians used them to hunt and ride them as is so often shown.
BTW, my family came to these shores in 1933 and walked to what is now called Michigan.
Your family WALKED to Michigan? Why walked? (I'm fascinated by people's family histories and stories).
You mean the Spanish brought them over from Spain? So you're saying that Spain already had tomatoes? Sorry guess again.
I thought I read that in Food & Wine or something.....that tomatoes were not indigenous to N. America and were brought over from Europe.....where did they come from?
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