Question for February 2010

We know that the Aztecs were aware of wheels, since we see them on some of the toys that they had for their children, but they do not seem to have applied this principle to anything else. While this seems odd, let’s remember where they lived. The heart of Aztec territory was on an island in the middle of a lake surrounded by very high mountains in Mexico. Wheels are good if you live somewhere fairly flat and need to move things over moderate distances. Aztecs could move food and supplies in and out of their city by boat far easier than a wheeled vehicle would allow them. If they needed to move things any great distance, they could not use wheels because they lived in a very mountainous region. It was far easier and quicker to simply carry it. We do believe that they may have used logs as rollers to move very large stones when they constructed their pyramids.

Not a wheel in sight around Lake Texcoco...