Mesoamerican civilizations compared to early Mesopotamia

[Razgovory]

I thought that a couple of different writing systems from the Indus civilization ARE known, but nobody has ever been able to actually decipher them?

They know they exist (or strongly suspect they do) because carved inscriptions were found on seal stones (and pot sherds and an alleged "signboard"). What they don't have are any long examples, because (presumably) they were written on perishable materials that do not survive. Hence, it is effectively impossible to decipher their language, since the examples are simply too short and probably mostly consist of proper names & titles.

It would be like attempting to decipher English if all you had of that language were people's Walmart Greeter nametags. "Hi, my name is John", "Hi, my name is Cathy", and an "Exit this way" sign. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilization#Writing_system

There is a one slight possibility.  If they discovered what the language the people there spoke, similar to the way they figured out how to read Mycenaean Greek, they could decipher it.  This is unfortunately not very likely either.

[jimmy olsen]

Some kind of proto-Vedic Sanskrit is likely isn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Sanskrit

[Maximus]

It's not clear to me that using a wheelbarrow is any better off than carrying a large load on your back.  I know from reading on the goldrush Indians could carry 100lb packs up the mountains (and made quite the fortune doing so from all the cheechakos).

Because of the tripodal nature of the wheelbarrow, any resistance in forward movement transforms into a sideways movement unbalancing the load. You are correct in that I would much rather have carried 100 lb over that pass than tried to push it in a wheelbarrow. As for the Mesoamericans, with stone-paved roads and a large enough wheel, the wheelbarrow could have worked, but it's far from an obvious idea.

[alfred russel]

And google is one's friend on this won, I knew something about the Chinese using wheelbarrow, but google throw out this, to me, rather informative article:
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-wheelbarrow.html

Interesting, but somewhat confusing on two fronts...First, in this world of disappearing magazines, one called "low tech magazine" is surviving. On the internet. With articles on ancient chinese wheelbarrows.

Second, the article mentions that wheelbarrows in europe appeared in the 13th century, 2000 years after wagons. Didn't wagons appear long before that?

[dps]

Some kind of proto-Vedic Sanskrit is likely isn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Sanskrit

Proably not.  The Indus Valley Civilization was probably founded by inhabitants who pre-dated the arrival of Indo-European groups to the area.

[Malthus]

Some kind of proto-Vedic Sanskrit is likely isn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Sanskrit

It's controversial (that is, totally unknown). Likely guesses include some sort of Dravidic or Indo-European.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harappan_language

It would not be proto-Vedic, because as dps points out, Vedic arrived with the Aryans who were non-indiginous invaders.

[jimmy olsen]

So, were surface deposits of copper, tin, zinc and arsenic rare in Mesoamerica?

If not, why didn't they make more use copper alloys? We know they knew how to make bronze/brass, but mostly used them for decorative pieces.

[Razgovory]

So, were surface deposits of copper, tin, zinc and arsenic rare in Mesoamerica?

If not, why didn't they make more use copper alloys? We know they knew how to make bronze/brass, but mostly used them for decorative pieces.

Why did the Romans not build wind mills?  Sometimes ideas just don't occur to people.

[Darth Wagtaros]

So, were surface deposits of copper, tin, zinc and arsenic rare in Mesoamerica?

If not, why didn't they make more use copper alloys? We know they knew how to make bronze/brass, but mostly used them for decorative pieces.

Why did the Romans not build wind mills?  Sometimes ideas just don't occur to people.

Slave labor was plentiful and cheap enough that innovation like that wouldn't be cost effective.

[DGuller]

Didn't you learn about simple machines in school?

Yeah, and there are other considerations that would make a wheel barrow more useful, though set against the reduced cross-country performance vs backpacking a load.

I had to memorize (and later totally forget), a bunch of equations that showed how levers and wheels require less force to move things then just picking them up.

Less force doesn't mean less energy in the physics sense, although human physiology can come into play.

[PDH]

So, were surface deposits of copper, tin, zinc and arsenic rare in Mesoamerica?

If not, why didn't they make more use copper alloys? We know they knew how to make bronze/brass, but mostly used them for decorative pieces.

A culture doesn't just say "Hey look!  If we put these things together they are better!  Let's replace our ways and stonework with an entire new system of metalworking and smithing overnight!"

Societal and technological change throughout history didn't work this way, instead it was a long and slow (sometimes painful) process to replace one technology with another.  Look at the slow adaptation of the heavy plow in the Middle Ages, for example, or the 2-field to 3-field change process during that era.

The fact that the people in Mexico knew about bronze (for instance) does not preclude that they would simple start using it right away.  That is an overy simplistic argument that disregards such things as culture and society, and how they might view such things.  Impetus for change, desire to change, and why they are doing things as they are in the first place often are/were the reasons for such things.  Do not project the technological rate of change in the past 150 years as the human societal norm.

The Mesopotamian civilizations, for all the changes they saw, took incredibly long periods to adopt technologies, to adapt to new ways of metalworking, and to societally evolve.  We are talking thousands of years, sometimes only aided by outside intervention.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Listen to the PeeDeeACHE.  He is a Professor.

[alfred russel]

We are talking thousands of years, sometimes only aided by outside intervention.

,  , or  ?

[jimmy olsen]

So, were surface deposits of copper, tin, zinc and arsenic rare in Mesoamerica?

If not, why didn't they make more use copper alloys? We know they knew how to make bronze/brass, but mostly used them for decorative pieces.

Why did the Romans not build wind mills?  Sometimes ideas just don't occur to people.

Replacing a flint ax head with a bronze one is a much simpler idea than building wind mills, not really comparable.

EDIT: ^^^ PDH - Good points.

[PDH]

Listen to the PeeDeeACHE.  He is a Professor.

I am not a professor, I am a lecturer.  I work for a living.