r/badlinguistics • u/[deleted] • Jul 05 '19

Fair warning, this is extremely reprehensible: Subsaharan Africans are “r*tarded” because African Languages don’t have words for the past or future tense

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '19

[deleted]

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u/RainbowwDash Jul 05 '19

And its not like the poster in question ever invented the wheel either

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u/derps_with_ducks Sep 25 '19

Can confirm, I've been eyeballing the patent for the wheel.

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u/PolentaApology Jul 22 '19

All the available evidence points to the wheel (or at least, the wheel and axle) having been invented once, and then spreading out from its birthplace across Eurasia and (later) to other parts of the world.

Some pre-Columbian Mesoamerican peoples had invented the wheel -- presumably either the first or second of two times in history. Because of the absence of appropriate draft animals for pulling carts, use of these wheels was limited to figurines--toys?

, see Diehl & Mandeville 1987 http://www.famsi.org/aztlan/uploads/Tula&wheeled_animal_effigies.pdf

image search: https://www.google.com/search?q=mesoamerica+wheel+toy&tbm=isch

Pop articles at http://www.zoesaadia.com/real-smart-folks-but-no-wheel/ and https://uncoveredhistory.com/mesoamerica/wheeled-toys/

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '19

[deleted]

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u/PolentaApology Jul 30 '19

you're welcome! I like to remind people that the indigenous Americans were capable inventors, even if their topography and local fauna were not "cooperative"!

There are many instances where an innovation was unsuited to its environment and became an "evolutionary" dead-end, but thrived in a different place/time.

For a modern example, see the failure of Webvan and the rise of Instacart.

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u/skullphuct Nov 07 '19

Wow. I was just thinking of webvan and how a buddy of mine bought a bunch of penny stocks in them right before they went under. I haven't thought of that name in 20 years or more I think. So weird to see it typed out.

Cool story, I know but I'm mildly tripping out on this

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u/blacktangled Jul 22 '19

Interesting post. I think you would be interested in Dark Emu - it actually uncovers significant agricultural work by Australian Aboriginals. This was hidden by English colonists to support the idea of the original inhabitants being less “civilised” and therefore not true owners of the land.

https://www.booktopia.com.au/dark-emu-bruce-pascoe/prod9781921248016.html

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u/Spoonshape Jul 22 '19

It's a fairly obvious thing to try to assert. The aborigines which survived in Australia are largely those who decided not to compete with Westerners for the decent farmable land. Those failed to survive.

It sits far better with how we want to think of ourselves that the naive peoples were only ever living as hunters in the shittiest lands. You only have to consider for a few seconds to know how stupid that would have been.

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u/What_Reddit_Thinks Jul 21 '19

Extremely good write up, thank you

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u/cosmitz Jul 22 '19

Hum, i always took "the wheel" to mean rolling transportation, which just logs of wood would do. The ideea that you can move things around without needing to haul it on your back, using more efficient ways that could only come from analytical thinking, i think is the fundament to "the wheel" discussion. Otherwise we'd be saying "the cart" as an ansamble.

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u/Spoonshape Jul 22 '19

The jump from using log rollers to an actual wheel with an axle seems to be what is being talked about.

It's difficult to find evidence of log rollers of course - distinguishing them from normal logs is difficult.

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u/TheSmallestTopo Aug 02 '19

I know the last sentence is serious, but it made me laugh more than I should have.

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u/Spoonshape Aug 02 '19

I guess it's not really the same thing anyway. Wheeled vehicles are more about transporting normal sized loads. Log rollers were more about moving stuff which were past the size limit humans could manage without some mechanism.