re: #229 The Ghost of Senator Incitatus

A basic tech-tree fallacy fuck-up: the emphasis on the wheel.

The wheel as transportation component makes sense when there’s (1) flat, open land in general, (2) even minimal infrastructure to create roads and tracks.

Andean peoples and Mexican Basin people knew what wheels were—they used them as toys, and for pottery—but the fucking things didn’t make sense if you were hauling shit up and down the of the Andes, and weren’t that useful if you had the alternate of bearers that could move faster across mixed terrain.