This website explores a little known aspect of Pre-Columbian America: that the cultures and civilizations, from Mexico to Chile, never developed the use of the wheel as it was used in Eurasia and Africa.

However, that is not to say that the wheel was unknown!  Far from it.  Cultures throughout Ancient America not only knew of the wheel, but made use of it in various ways.

Wheeled Dog or Cat from Veracruz
A.D. 450-650 - Ceramic with post-fire
applied paint; 2 7/8 x 4 in. (7.3 x 10.16 cm)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Clay wheel from Tula. Diameter 5 cm.
(Location #2)

Wheeled animal effigy body from Tula showing perforated leg. Length 9 cm.
(Location #2)

Wheeled animal effigy fragment from Tula showing tail stub and perforated leg. Length 7cm. (Location #2)

Mexico National Museum of Anthropology

Pieces of wheeled objects from Cojumatlan, Micoacan, Mexico

Round Wheel-Shaped
Pre-Columbian Designs!

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Thank you to Mrs. Justin Kerr for permission to use/link to photos.

Locations where Wheeled objects have been found in Mesoamerica On Map
1 Panuco, Veracruz 2 Tula, Hidalgo 3 Teotihuacan, Estado de Mexico 4 Remojadas, Veracruz 5 Nopiloa, Veracruz 6 Tres Zapotes, Veracruz 7 Cihuatan, El Salvador 8 Cocle, Panama	9 Valley of Oaxaca (not on map) 10  Tenenepango (not on map) 11 Cojumatlan, Micoacan, Mexico (not on map)

For all an archaeologist's or anthropologist's professional training in how ancient societies organize themselves with 'appropriate technologies', it is not easy to grasp how very different those ancient civilizations were from any society we have experienced. Nowhere is this clearer than in Mesoamerica, where cities and empires had no need of the 'basics' of urban life as we know it. One of those 'basics' is wheels, discussed here in the sole, small context in which they are commonplace in pre-Columbian America.

One of the major differences between the ancient civilizations of Eurasia and those of the Americas was the absence of wheeled transportation in the latter. Ironically, the principle of using wheels to facilitate horizontal movement was familiar to at least some peoples of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica; and the existence of small clay animal effigies mounted on wheels - 'toys', as they are sometimes called - has been known since the 19th century.

Over 100 years ago, Desire Charnay reported the first Mesoamerican wheeled animal effigy (Charnay 1882 [1973]). While excavating at Tenenepango on the slopes of the volcano Popocatepetl near Mexico City, he found a small dog effigy with perforated legs associated with four wheels. He argued that the wheels were indeed wheels rather than spindle whorls, a conclusion accepted by everyone who has examined both types of artefact since then. Charnay's discovery was ignored or rejected outright, perhaps, as Ekholm (1946: 223) suggests, because of his exaggerated claims and false conclusions on many other topics. The issue of wheels in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica remained dormant for 50 years. Linne, for example, recovered at least two wheeled animal fragments in his Xolalpan excavations at Teotihuacan, recognized them as such in his field notes, but did not mention them in his published report (S. Scott, pers. comm., 1982).  The issue was reopened in the 1940s with finds of wheeled effigies at Tres Zapotes, Veracruz, and the Pavon site at Panuco, Veracruz, reported in American Antiquity (Ekholm 1946) and a 'Mesa Rodante' in Cuadernos Americanos (Caso et 01. 1946). Almost all the numerous articles published since (e.g. Linne 1951; Lister 1947; von Winning 1950; 1951; 1960) describe objects in private collections whose lack of provenience and association data make them little more than interesting curiosities. The fullest recent discussion is a monograph (Boggs 1973) describing nine examples found in EI Salvador and summarizing then current knowledge about Mesoamerican wheeled animals.

for the full text click here »

The principle of the wheel was known to ancient Americans, but in the absence of suitable draft animals had no economic importance. Cihuatán has yielded more wheeled figurines than any other site in Mesoamerica. Most depict dogs (like this one at left), pumas, or monkeys.

Location #4: A wheeled deer (or perhaps dog), in the Remojadas style.
This ceramic figurine also functions as a whistle (ocarina).
Height: 7 in. (18 cm); length: 8 in (21 cm) - dated 600-800^CE (AD)

Location #6:Drawing of pottery dog-like animal effigy with and ornamental crown from Tres Zapotes, Veracruz, dated ca. 100-200^CE (AD).  These wheeled toys were able to be pulled by cord, but believed to be a funeral offering since they typically show no wear from use.

Asserted to be from Nopiloa, Veracruz 300-600^CE (AD)
(Private Collection - provenience unauthenticated)

Spindle whorl. Chalco, State of Mexico (shown larger than actual size, which is about that of a quarter). Small discs of clay, wood, or gourd are used with a spindle rod in order to spin fibers by hand. Spindle whorls come in a great variety of forms and decorations.

Why Not Wheels?

Given that this technology was known by several cultures of Ancient America, and given (and it is a FACT) that is was not in use to transport goods and people, the question begs answering: why wasn't it used?

In actuality, there are a limited set of plausible reasons why wheels were not used and wide-spread.  For the sake of speculation, they are:

1) It was a sacred device.  It is common in cultures around the world for certain objects or devices to be treated as sacred, and not to be used.  However, there is no record of this being the case for pre-Columbian Wheels.

2) Wheels were heretical, or forbidden for other reasons.  Again this might be a case of a religious connection.  Certainly, in Western religious traditions there have been numerous objects that were forbidden from use.  However, there is no record of this being the case for pre-Columbian Wheels.

3) Pre-columbian roads really were not suitable to wheeled transport - feet navigate jungles and mountains far better.  Speaking from personal experience in the rediscovery of portions of a large road system in Costa Rica (at Guayabo), the Pre-columbian roads were far from smooth, and would have quickly destroyed wooden or stone wheels.  In fact, it was through the invention of iron bands that wooden wheels held up on European cobble-stone streets.

4) They never made the connection from models to large scale - this is a known phenomenon that exists even today.  As difficult as it may seem to a modern mentality, it is entirely reasonable for this failure to grasp the significance of toy wheels to have existed.  Thus, small wheeled effigy models were as far as the thought process progressed.  However, there is no proof, one way or the other for this.

5) They could not solve or evolve the supportive technologies needed for functional wheels: bearings, uniform manufacture, etc.  For a wheel system to function, to be used for its intended purpose as a load-bearing locomotion system, there are several components that must be in place and function reliably.  The wheel itself is a big part, but it requires an axel, and a bearing between them.  This could simply be grease lubricating the interface between the wheel hub and the axel, but without it, the wheel will bind or destroy the axel quickly.  Wheels also need to be uniformly manufactured.  We know these cultures could manufacture objects of extreme complexity in stone and soft metals, but wheels?

6) Wheels might have been in limited use, but the technology was lost, and no artifacts remain.  It is known that warfare was widespread throughout Ancient America, in Mesoamerica and in the Andean region of South America especially.  It is probable that numerous advances in technology were lost, as the artisans that developed them were overrun and killed or made captive.  This may be one of the reasons we see sophisticated crafts devolve into more primitive, as occurred in many regions.  If there were limited wheel makers, they may have expired before being able to spread the knowledge needed.  But remember, this is speculation.

7) They never saw the need.  With a abundant human workforce throughout Ancient America, and without large beasts of burden, wheeled vehicles would have been redundant and unnecessary.  In practical terms, it is easier to carry goods, than to pull the good and the wagon, if the terrain is not well suited to wheeled vehicles.  

However, in other cultures wheeled vehicles were pulled by humans, and while the cobbled roads were not very suitable to smooth travel, we know there were roads well suited to wheeled vehicles in Mexico and Peru.  In the end, the most likely explanation is that the wheel, by virtue of being only used on small effigies (toys) had an unknown religious significance that has not survived, that, and the lack of need, are the reasons, more than any other, that prevented the wheel's use in utilitarian roles.

But there are other factors involved also. The principle of rotary motion is obvious to our modern senses, and was well known throughout the New World. The Inca culture, for example, are thought to have used wooden rollers to haul some of the giant stones  used to build Cuzco and other cities. Unfortunately, as previously said, there was a total lack of draft animals, with only one beast of burden known: the llama, which was used solely as a pack animal.  Without draft animals you cannot do extensive hauling with sledges, and without sledges it will never occur to their builder that the wheel would be a next logical step. When the Inca's architects had to transport heavy objects, they relied on manpower, often to the considerable sorrow of the men doing the powering (some 3,000 of 20,000 workers died dragging one particularly massive stone, according to chronicles). Consequently, heavy hauling in the New World was restricted to manpower. The Sumerians, on the other hand, had considerable experience with the use of sledges, but even so it took them 2,000 years of design evolution before the idea of the wheel finally dawned. Not that it just popped out of thin air. The general sequence of friction-reducing inventions is thought to have been: sledges with runners, sledges over loose rollers, sledges with rollers held in place by guides, sledges with rollers held in place by guides and thickened on the ends to make them roll straighter, sledges with the wheel and axle (a cart), and from there it's a straight path to a Tiajuana Taxi!

Tim McGuinness, Ph.D.
Scientist, Author, Publisher
December 2007

For more insight visit:  www.Precolumbian.us

a & b from Panuco Veracrus length 7in. (Location 1 on map above), c from Tenenepango (D. Charnay's illustration), d from Tres Zapotes (6), e attributed from from Valley of Oaxaca
from WHEELED TOYS IN MEXICO 1946 by Goldon F. Ekholm (click here for the document)

decorated spindle whorl from
Cihuatán, El Salvador

decorated spindle whorl from Guatemala

Artifacts From Montezuma Castle National Monument, including piece of gourd with carved handle, squash, cotton boles, spindle & whorl, and corn.  Montezuma Castle National Monument, Arizona, USA

Aztec Gold and turquoise mosaic wheel

Peruvian Vicus Gold alloy mace head.
This is NOT a gear! 
It is a serrated circular blade designed to
inflict more serious damage!
The Andean cultures never produced geared mechanisms!

Definitions:

medicine wheel
A kind of site in the northwest North American Plains which was comprised of stone alignments set in radiating spokes, often with central and peripheral cairns. Medicine wheels served a number of purposes and some are as old as 5500 BP. In southern Montana is a medicine wheel which is a prehistoric relic constructed of rough stones laid side by side, forming a circle 70 feet (20 m) in diameter with 28 spokes leading from the center hub, which is about 12 feet (3.5 m) in diameter.

potter's wheel
A wheel rotating horizontally which assists a potter in shaping clay into vessels. The development of the slow, or hand-turned, wheel as an adjunct to pottery manufacture led to the kick wheel, rotated by foot, which became the potter's principal tool. The potter throws the clay onto a rapidly rotating disk and shapes his pot by manipulating it with both hands. By the Uruk phase in Mesopotamia, c 3400 BC, the fast wheel was already in use. It spread slowly, reaching Europe with the Minoans c 2400 BC, and Britain with the Belgae in the 1st century BC. Its presence can be taken to imply an organized pottery industry, often also using an advanced type of kiln.

wheel
One of man's simplest but most important inventions. A Sumerian (Erech) pictograph, dated about 3500 BC, shows a sledge equipped with wheels. It is also shown in Uruk pictographs, c 3400 BC, and on the Royal Standard of Ur. Early wheels were solid and unwieldy, made of a single piece of wood or three carved planks clamped together by transverse struts. Spoked wheels appeared about 2000 BC, when they were in use on chariots in Asia Minor. The wheel was not used in pre-Columbian America, except in Mexico, where small pull-along toys in the form of animals were made in terra-cotta. The use of a wheel (turntable) for pottery had also developed in Mesopotamia by 3500 BC.

source: Archaeology Wordsmith

Bibliography & Online Library:

Boggs, Stanley H. (English 1973)
Salvadoran Varieties of Wheeled Figurines
Contributions to Mesoamerican Anthropology, 1
33 p., Miami

Diehl, Richard A.; Mandeville, Margaret D. (English 1987)
Tula, and the wheeled animal effigies in Mesoamerica (pdf)
Antiquity 61(232):239-246
Cambridge, England

Ekholm, Gordon F. (English 1946)
Wheeled toys in Mexico (pdf)
American Antiquity 11(4):222-228
Washington, DC

Lister, Robert H. (English 1947)
Additional evidence of wheeled toys in Mexico (pdf)
American Antiquity 12(3):184-185
Washington, DC

Stendahl, Earl L. (English 1950)
Wheeled toys
Masterkey 24(5):160-162
Los Angeles

Stocker, Terrence L., Et Al. (English 1986)
Wheeled figurines from Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico
Mexicon 8(4):69-73
Berlin

Winning, Hasso Von (English 1950)
Animal figurines on wheels from ancient Mexico
Masterkey 24:154-159
Los Angeles

Winning, Hasso Von (English 1951)
Another wheeled animal figurine from Mexico
Masterkey 25:88-89
Los Angeles

Winning, Hasso Von (English 1960)
Further examples of figurines on wheels from Mexico
Ethnos 25(1-2):63-72
Stockholm