quite a jump to use wheels not only for toys but also for tools, no animals, no proper use of wheels, how do you get to mills then?
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I'm not sure if they actually didn't know the wheel as the idea, it's not so hard to notice logs rolling downhill for instance. They might use them for transport of heavy stone blocks like the Egyptians...
What we know they didn't invented the cart wheel, just because it was unnecessary for them because of lack of the any serious draft animal.
They could eventually domesticate buffalos though
Good luck plowing fields with a windmill, or quick communication through large empires with just foot runners for messengers.That's why windmills and watermills exist. The means by which Europe boosted itself to the level where they were ready to adopt steam power
Yeah, they were. It's mostly just a matter of organisation. Lack of domesticated animals might actually result in a boost for technical innovation after a certain point, since you couldn't compensate for shortage of human labour with animals, you'd have to use technology for it.
It works well if everything goes alright. When facing and invasion and civil war, as the Incas did, every problem surfaces in the worst moment.
I'm not sure if they actually didn't know the wheel as the idea, it's not so hard to notice logs rolling downhill for instance. They might use them for transport of heavy stone blocks like the Egyptians...
What we know they didn't invented the cart wheel, just because it was unnecessary for them because of lack of the any serious draft animal.
They could eventually domesticate buffalos though
Article I found on the subject while googling: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-it-took-so-long-to-inv/
Short summary. It's not hard to make a wheel, it's hard to build all the stuff to make use of the wheel. Wheels are still useful even without animals for reducing friction on moving large loads. I know I use a wheelbarrow when I'm doing yardwork as an example. I'm betting they'd have grabbed it in a similar fashion as in Sumeria. As more and more larger loads need to be moved, they develop more ways to make things easier.
You're moving goal posts though. Getting more work out of mechanical means instead of humans is still a plus. Communication through foot runners isn't as bad as you'd think. A dedicated human can outpace a horse over long stretches. Costs more I'd think to have dedicated runners, and using a system of remounts has the horse clearly win, but I wouldn't think it'd be that terrible. And indeed they did have a pretty good system established. Bet it would have been even better if it had been stress tested better before the Spanish overworked the system.
This is/was a big deal. Some of the most important pre-industrial advances in the world were made either to facilitate the use of animal labor, or were only possible because of animal labor. Even the development of most kinds of machinery was 'pushed' by the desire to couple the power of horses and oxen to a variety of devices that would use that power for things which the animals can't do by pure muscle power alone - think things like automatic threshers, hay balers, cotton gin's, wire drawing works, large scale laundries, etc. These were all developed originally to be horse or oxen power, and then replaced with steam later on.
The arguement about lack of metals in the new world is preposterous. The new world wasn't in any way shape or form held back by lack of access to metals. They were and are present in lavishly abundent quantities, and excellent quantity in multiple places, together with suitable fuels to smelt them with. What was lacking was the technological expertise to mine, process, smelt and use them. A short quick list of examples:
Iron: Massive high quality deposits throught the great lakes area, in the midst of very thick woods and in limestone hills.
The Caraja iron ore complex in the mainly limestone Caraja mountains of Brazil, located not far from the coast and surrounded by massive teak, mahogony, and other high fuel capacity hardwood trees.
Major iron mining areas also include Peru, Chile, Mexico, and Venezela - all along the central and south american Andes, mostly in regions which are densely forested (Chile excluded)
Bolivia and Brazil are some of the leading world producers of Tin
The west coast of South America is THE worlds leading producer of Copper - the upper peninsula of Michigan was one of the leading copper producing regions of the 19th and early 20th century and was famous for the massive pure copper specimans from the region - pure as in large lumps of copper ready to use, no smelting required. Of course the western US is the 2nd leading copper producing area in the world after the west coast of South America.
As for coal besides the numerous coal mining regions of the US and Canada (some of which are literally in the same spots as iron ore) there are large high quality deposits in Columbia and Peru as well. Brazil and Mexico also produce coal - certainly enough to be useful for an industrial revolution if one were to take place there.
There are too many large, high quality sources of zinc, lead, nickel, aluminum and other basic metals to reasonably count.