<story><title>The last Incan suspension bridge is made entirely of grass and woven by hand</title><url>http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2013/06/10/the_last_incan_suspension_bridge_is_made_entirely_of_grass_and_woven_by.html?wpsrc=theweek</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hdevalence</author><text>&amp;gt; The Incas never invented the wheel...&lt;p&gt;In fact, the Incans did know about wheels, it&amp;#x27;s just that wheels are considerably less useful when you don&amp;#x27;t have any large pack animals to pull things. It&amp;#x27;s an accident of geography, and the article would be better off without the vaguely racist opening about how the &amp;quot;primitive&amp;quot; Incans were able to do amazing things with fibres even though they never &amp;quot;figured out&amp;quot; this other stuff.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Aloisius</author><text>&lt;i&gt;In fact, the Incans did know about wheels, it&amp;#x27;s just that wheels are considerably less useful when you don&amp;#x27;t have any large pack animals to pull things.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Incans did not have the wheel (when we refer to people having the wheel, we mean with an axle). They used wood beams to roll things around, but that&amp;#x27;s not a wheel. As far as I know, the only group that had the wheel in the Americas were the ancient Mexicans.&lt;p&gt;Further, devices like wheel barrows and carts are incredibly useful with or without pack animals. Doubly so if you had the incredible manpower that the Incans had where you can easily just use humans to pull them instead of pack animals. Wheels aren&amp;#x27;t just for hauling things around either, it is hard to express how &lt;i&gt;incredibly&lt;/i&gt; useful potter&amp;#x27;s wheels has been for the last five thousand years.</text></comment>
<story><title>The last Incan suspension bridge is made entirely of grass and woven by hand</title><url>http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2013/06/10/the_last_incan_suspension_bridge_is_made_entirely_of_grass_and_woven_by.html?wpsrc=theweek</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hdevalence</author><text>&amp;gt; The Incas never invented the wheel...&lt;p&gt;In fact, the Incans did know about wheels, it&amp;#x27;s just that wheels are considerably less useful when you don&amp;#x27;t have any large pack animals to pull things. It&amp;#x27;s an accident of geography, and the article would be better off without the vaguely racist opening about how the &amp;quot;primitive&amp;quot; Incans were able to do amazing things with fibres even though they never &amp;quot;figured out&amp;quot; this other stuff.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>adventured</author><text>Wasn&amp;#x27;t racist in the least.&lt;p&gt;Arguing over technological superiority or lack thereof has absolutely nothing to do with race.&lt;p&gt;Would it be racist to say that cavemen were primitive because they lacked the steam engine? No, it&amp;#x27;s merely acknowledging the fact of their state of technology. And it should be noted, primitive in this sense exists on constantly shifting sand: Americans from 1776 were primitive as well. Saying so is not racist.&lt;p&gt;By our standards today, George Washington was killed by medical malpractice, having been bled to death. It all sounds so barbaric by comparison to what we take for granted now. I&amp;#x27;m sure our chemotherapy of today will sound like primitive barbarism tomorrow.</text></comment>