The last Incan suspension bridge is made entirely of grass and woven by hand

http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2013/06/10/the_last_incan_suspension_bridge_is_made_entirely_of_grass_and_woven_by.html?wpsrc=theweek

by llambda • 13 years ago

130 45 13 years ago

slate.com

hdevalence• 13 years ago

The Incas never invented the wheel...

In fact, the Incans did know about wheels, it's just that wheels are considerably less useful when you don't have any large pack animals to pull things. It's an accident of geography, and the article would be better off without the vaguely racist opening about how the "primitive" Incans were able to do amazing things with fibres even though they never "figured out" this other stuff.

lostlogin2• 13 years ago

Not just fibre, as I'm sure you're aware. Their stonework is awe inspiring and seemingly quite earthquake resistant too. I spent hours admiring their walls and terraces.

scottmagdalein• 13 years ago

Racist? C'mon dude.

adventured2• 13 years ago

Wasn't racist in the least.

Arguing over technological superiority or lack thereof has absolutely nothing to do with race.

Would it be racist to say that cavemen were primitive because they lacked the steam engine? No, it's merely acknowledging the fact of their state of technology. And it should be noted, primitive in this sense exists on constantly shifting sand: Americans from 1776 were primitive as well. Saying so is not racist.

By our standards today, George Washington was killed by medical malpractice, having been bled to death. It all sounds so barbaric by comparison to what we take for granted now. I'm sure our chemotherapy of today will sound like primitive barbarism tomorrow.

milfot2• 13 years ago

The idea of 'primitive cultures' historically was used to intimate that certain groups were closer to animals, hence sub-human, and usurp them out of their land.

Wiki says "The term is generally no longer used in mainstream writing as it is widely considered racist and many groups, including Survival International, have campaigned to stamp it out. The term continues to be used in everyday speech among older inhabitants of former colonial powers and by far right groups, particularly those with a white supremacist ideology."

Many (most?) US-icans from 2013 are unable to grow their own food, find clean drinking water, build tools and shelter, hunt, fight etc. Primitive is a judgment against the technology or skills required to survive in the world you inhabit on a daily basis. So if it is has racist undertones and is entirely non-descriptive / non-meaningful.. why use it?

Edit: In response to child comment (thanks), to make clear I was referring to the parent comment, not the article. It was the characterisation of 'superior technologies' and 'primitive' people I was responding to.

Aloisius2• 13 years ago

In fact, the Incans did know about wheels, it's just that wheels are considerably less useful when you don't have any large pack animals to pull things.

The Incans did not have the wheel (when we refer to people having the wheel, we mean with an axle). They used wood beams to roll things around, but that's not a wheel. As far as I know, the only group that had the wheel in the Americas were the ancient Mexicans.

Further, devices like wheel barrows and carts are incredibly useful with or without pack animals. Doubly so if you had the incredible manpower that the Incans had where you can easily just use humans to pull them instead of pack animals. Wheels aren't just for hauling things around either, it is hard to express how incredibly useful potter's wheels has been for the last five thousand years.

seanmcdirmid2• 13 years ago

I think Incans lived in the mountains and lacked lots of flat ground with which to roll things around. So they did develop some wheel-like devices, but they never applied them in things like wheel barrows or carts because those are just not that useful going up and down mountains.

temp453463343• 13 years ago

To be honest, I've always found the evidence that ancient Mexicans had the wheel rather dubious. All we have that supports this claim are small clay fired figurines that allegedly had wheels on them. The problem with the claim is that the axles would have been made of wood so they no longer exist. So all you have are some clay fired figures with 4 round disks... If they really did have wheels, then it's rather mind boggling (and rather implausible) that they didn't apply the technology to something more practical.

I think it's important to approach history/art-history of ancient cultures with a health dose of skepticism - especially ones that didn't have a written language. These academic fields sometimes promote theories that are based on rather wild speculations.

seanmcdirmid2• 13 years ago

Being a few thousand years behind in technological development is nothing on a geological and evolutionary timescale. That such drift would occur without convenient paths for diffusion of ideas and technology is probably unavoidable.

Give uncontacted peoples (say the Sentinalese) a few thousand years and they would eventually die out or develop. What is a bit sad is that the world is converging into one basic level of development that limits diversity; e.g. beyond just fibre, the Incans had stone building technology that we have no idea how to replicate.

sbierwagen• 13 years ago

This is a condensed version of a longer article: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/world_of_wonders/2011/02/...

anonymoushn• 13 years ago

It's not really a 500-year-old bridge if they install a new one every year...

rubyrescue• 13 years ago

That's actually a famous paradox - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

redthrowaway• 13 years ago

This isn't that, though. They're not replacing the bridge strand-by-strand; they construct an entirely new bridge each year then get rid of the old one.

lostlogin2• 13 years ago

It's like an Inca tradition, agreed.

beloch• 13 years ago

In some areas, such as agriculture, modern technology still has much to learn from the achievements of the Incas. The amount of land under cultivation in the Andes is still a fraction of what it once was.

ghshephard• 13 years ago

The Green Revolution [1] advanced modern agriculture far beyond any historical antecedents (rumored or documented) that I've ever heard about - but I would be delighted to hear otherwise.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

claudius• 13 years ago

The amount of land under cultivation in the Andes is still a fraction of what it once was.

And yet I haven’t heard of famines in the past few years – which, given Europe’s history before ‘modern technology’ came along, should happen every now and then with the older methods.

Certainly modern agriculture does have some drawbacks, and with an appropriate set of priorities, you can probably claim that it is worse than what we had 200 years ago, but it works surprisingly well at feeding seven billion people while at the same time only requiring a tiny fraction of said seven billion people to actually be employed in agriculture.

riemannzeta• 13 years ago

The Bridge of San Luis Rey might be my favorite novel.

prewett• 13 years ago

I read that as "made entirely of glass" and was imagining a rope bridge made out of glass strands. Could be pretty cool at night if the strands were light pipes and you lit up the ends...

hrjet• 13 years ago

Same here. And the mention of "fibre" in the article made me think along the same lines.

If I hadn't misread I would have been impressed by the bridge.

Surio• 13 years ago

Also related, a "living bridge" in India

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

chaitanya• 13 years ago

They are quite amazing: http://www.picturesw.com/2012/08/the-natural-root-bridges-of...

tezza• 13 years ago

These were featured in Human Planet documentary series ( Rivers ). Well worth a look.

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

aarondf• 13 years ago

But how did they string the bridge across the first time?

jlgreco3• 13 years ago

Start by pulling across a string (with an arrow, or by climbing over to the other side with it). Use that string to pull over a cord, use that cord to pull over a rope, use that rope to pull over a bridge.

chiph• 13 years ago

Modern suspension bridges are started that same exact way.

ryan-allen• 13 years ago

I thought Incan only looked after domain names?

roel_v• 13 years ago

"developing a language of knotted strings known as quipo, which has yet to be decoded"

Sigh, not this crap again. I bought a book in Arequipa or Cusco back in 2004 or so that described in detail a large amount of quipu that had been found in the area. Just reading the Wikipedia article would have been enough for this author to debunk this Incan mythical nonsense. It's pretty widely settled now that quipu are a system for counting and bookkeeping and is not a writing system in the sense that it translates words or sounds into written equivalents. E.g. you had to know that red knots represented mules and yellow ones baskets of corn (it's obviously much more complex than this). It's still a writing system and indubitably very useful and ingenious for and of the Incans, but we do know a bunch about it.

The last Incan suspension bridge is made entirely of grass and woven by hand

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