{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5142",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 5142,
    "subject": "Transatlantic Contact (New Wolfe Listing on Amazon)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2008-09-04T14:59:38+00:00",
    "last": "2008-09-04T14:59:38+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<631275.85161.qm@web83714.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "John Smith",
        "address": "jsmith2627 at att.net"
      },
      "date": "2008-09-04T14:59:38+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Transatlantic Contact (New Wolfe Listing on Amazon)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Dave Tallman wrote:\n\n \"Obviously they did not evolve the \nwheel. They got it from somebody who had already evolved. And this \nsomebody could not put a cart or chariot aboard the ship. It took up too \nmuch room. You could put a hundred little wheeled toys aboard the ship \nand trade them. Right? \"\n\nNot obvious to me.  Rather, I think the fact that American Indians had wheeled toys (but did not put wheels to practical use) points to the opposite conclusion:  Indians invented the wheel on their own.\n\nWheels are very useful, and once people see the uses they adopt them.  Traders from the old world could easily have transported wheeled tools such as the wheelbarrow, the potter's wheel, and the pulley.  If the Indians had been introduced to such tools, their use would have quickly spread.\n\nTraders could have brought wheeled toys, of course, but I wonder if toys would have been valuable for trading.  Trade goods are typically practical items, and a wheeled tool seems better for trade than a wheeled toy.\n\nBut transatlantic contact doesn't have to be all or nothing.  The question probably should be how extensive the contacts were and how much influence was exerted.\n\nPhoenicians or Greeks or Romans may well have visited Central America.  But did they have a large impact on indigenous civilizations?  \n\nSome writers have asserted that American Indians got their civilizations from the old world.  For example, Mayan pyramids are seen as evidence that Egyptians settled in America.  But it is more probable that two peoples came to a similar solution to building large structures with primitive technology.  Native Americans most likely invented most of their civilizations on their own.\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBest wishes,\n\nJack"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}