My guess is that a lot of things we think of as "obvious" are far from it. Wheeled carts have a lot of moving parts and require a certain level of wood and metal craftmanship to be light and durable. My guess is that the Inca simply didn't have the required level of technology to make them, even though it would have made things a lot easier for them. Nevertheless, the way they adapted to the local environment with the tools they did have available is remarkable.
The Inca had knowledge of the wheel, but it was greatly impractical for the transportation of goods. Between the rocky terrain and steepness of the Andes, as well as bridges that would not always allow a wheeled cart to pass easily, it was simply more effective to use llamas. The wheel is impractical in both the jungles of Quito, and the mountains of Cusco. Should they have developed more flat land, I suspect they would have expanded on the wheel eventually, but that is only speculation.
This is incorrect, IMO. Imagine the benefit of even a simple wheelbarrow, no matter the terrain. They didn't make it because they couldn't make it with the available tech.
Archaeology student here... I'm pretty sure the Incas used both wood and metal. And clearly they knew how wheels worked and how to make them if they made them on toys. Your view that they somehow couldn't have had the technology or knowledge is kind of prejudiced and outdated. They weren't necessarily "backward" or "less advanced" just because they were an indigenous society. That idea is outdated and frankly harmful, and most archaeologists/anthropologists who have studied in the last 40 or 50 years have been trying to change that. And it's not like the Incas were around so long ago that the wheel was utterly inconceivable. The reason the other person said is correct: they knew how to make wheels and had the material, but they knew it was pointless. Let me remind you that the Incas lived in the Andean region - mountainous and rocky. Wheels would not have been that helpful, especially if other methods did the job. Knowing there's no need to change is also a sign of cognitive complexity
The Inca did not have wheels. And, yes, there are places where wheels would have been helpful.
Did this make them "backwards" as you imply. I don't think so. Many things that seem obvious are anything but. The wheel has not been around forever. The earliest wheeled vehicle was around 4000 BC.
And while the Incas did have bronze, it never replaced stone tools.
I believe it is your own prejudices that should be examined here. Why does the lack of a wheel make a culture "primitive" or "backwards"? What you are in effect saying is that only a "backwards" culture would fail to invent the wheel, so therefore they must have invented it. That's not how history works.
Based on what still rolls around in my mind about them, only in Ancient Sumer did the wheel arise. Being *probably* the first civilization with full-scale cities, it allowed things like the first complete writing system and wheels to be developed by people who weren't always worried about finding their next meals.
As a person who has a job because I’m educated in history and civilization, this quiz is totally fair. I was expecting some random trick question, like, “The Chinese technically had an ancient version of plastic in 450 AD”.
And speaking as someone who has been a professional science educator for over twenty years, it's this kind of "The humanities are worthless! Only science and math are important!" messaging that has, in part, led to a real decline in media literacy in our culture. Among the many, many other reasons why this sort of messaging is wrongheaded.
Our school really pushed the 'only STEM subjects are worth getting into' message while I was there, and I think it was the same all over. I wasn't surprised when I saw a graph showing, for example, how the numbers of people taking a modern languages GCSE had absolutely plummeted during that time. Kind of depressing...
I think the answer to the "bras" question is incorrect. The fact that a particular model was the first bra to be patented for commercial purposes doesn't mean that they didn't exist before. Actual bras from the medieval period have been found, and there's some evidence suggesting that bras existed as early as in ancient Egypt.
The same Wikipedia page mentions early brassieres and modern bras. Fragments dating back to the 15th century resemble bras as we know them, and it can be argued that some form of bras were worn in antiquity.
Would suggest changing the question to "modern bras" or accepting the yes answer.
I changed the clue to include the name "brassiere" which will eliminate all doubt. The modern bra wasn't invented until 1914 and the term "brassiere" wasn't used until 1893 (at the time referring to an undershirt-like garment).
That said, this change wasn't really necessary. Women in the 1700s didn't wear anything like what we would today call a bra.
All those Peanuts books from my childhood paid off for #8. "Here's the World War I flying ace zooming through the air in his Sopwith Camel."
I wasn't there, but I know that watching the Moon landing on television was a defining moment for my parents and grandparents.
I'm surprised that 50% thought the ancient Persians had eyeglasses. Besides needing the technology to create high quality lenses, they would also have needed advanced knowledge of optics. Ptolemy (c. 100-170 AD) described lenses, and then not much happened until the 10th Century.
Not just ancient Romans, also modern Romans don't eat spaghetti with marinara sauce.
As a representative of the group, I am not aware of what even is marinara sauce. The only "marinara" I know is "pizza alla marinara", which means "sailor's style pizza" b.t.w.
Marinara sauce is just a tomato-based sauce made with tomatoes, onions, garlic, olive oil, and herbs. The ancient Romans didn't have it because tomatoes came from South America.
To giommaso's point: "marinara sauce" is really more Italo-American than Italian. While the word is used in Italian, it refers to a wide array of preparations, many of which don't even include tomato.
Being australian, and hence having looked at historic stuff around the country, aboriginals had written language before the first fleet.
They used drawings and paintings etc. on walls and floors to communicate. I cannot remember what they communicated about, but I have seen historic paintings on cave walls (I think, it may not have been in Australia).
If you mean straight up written words and characters like english letters or japanese symbols, then they definitely did not.
Drawings and paintings don't qualify as written language. If they did, then prehistoric people would've had one too. Which would make them non-prehistoric.
These quizzes make me doubt my knowledge. Did the Persians have glasses? Seems a stretch, but the Chinese invented lots of things well before the Europeans, so maybe they did. They didn't. It wasn't a trick question.
Your question on penicillin needs rewording or the accepted answer changed to yes. Penicillin existed in Victorian times, so they technically had it. As it wasn't discovered it just wasn't used.
This is some next-level nitpicking, man. I think if the quiz asked you whether ancient peoples had electricity you'd know the answer is obviously "no", even though electricity has been around for 14 billion years or so.
Did this make them "backwards" as you imply. I don't think so. Many things that seem obvious are anything but. The wheel has not been around forever. The earliest wheeled vehicle was around 4000 BC.
And while the Incas did have bronze, it never replaced stone tools.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_America#Inca_Empire
I believe it is your own prejudices that should be examined here. Why does the lack of a wheel make a culture "primitive" or "backwards"? What you are in effect saying is that only a "backwards" culture would fail to invent the wheel, so therefore they must have invented it. That's not how history works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra
Would suggest changing the question to "modern bras" or accepting the yes answer.
That said, this change wasn't really necessary. Women in the 1700s didn't wear anything like what we would today call a bra.
I wasn't there, but I know that watching the Moon landing on television was a defining moment for my parents and grandparents.
I'm surprised that 50% thought the ancient Persians had eyeglasses. Besides needing the technology to create high quality lenses, they would also have needed advanced knowledge of optics. Ptolemy (c. 100-170 AD) described lenses, and then not much happened until the 10th Century.
As a representative of the group, I am not aware of what even is marinara sauce. The only "marinara" I know is "pizza alla marinara", which means "sailor's style pizza" b.t.w.
The sauce on it isn't named especially for it.
They used drawings and paintings etc. on walls and floors to communicate. I cannot remember what they communicated about, but I have seen historic paintings on cave walls (I think, it may not have been in Australia).
If you mean straight up written words and characters like english letters or japanese symbols, then they definitely did not.