An Aztec toy with perfectly engineered wheels
Added 2019-12-16 11:52:20 +0000 UTCThe Aztecs used wheels in children’s toys (such as small wheeled dogs made of pottery or occasionally obsidian) yet never considered using wheels for transport technology! A cart would have been next to useless in Mesoamerica; for a start, who or what would have pulled it? The Aztecs had no large pack animals, and human porters were more efficient at carrying individual packs over large distances.
The earliest known wheeled animal figure came from the ‘Classic Period’ (roughly, 300-900 AD or CE), found in the Huastec region of the Gulf of Mexico lowlands, whereas most date from the ‘Postclassic’ Period (from 900 to the time of the Conquest), and most are of dogs, jaguars, monkeys and deer.
