[elli1]

And how well-developed could their civilization have been when they didn't know about wheels?

The wheel invention spread by diffusion, invented in Sumaria around 3500 BC; the Brits didn't know about the wheel until approximately three thousand years later. In fact, evidence points to Mexico as the only place that invented the wheel (thought to have been a toy) independent of the Sumarian version. The folks in the Americas didn't know what to do with it, in part probably because they didn't have draft animals.

OTOH, it sure as heck took a long time for ''superior cultures'' to decipher the Incan calculator.

[Don Joe]

The folks in the Americas didn't know what to do with it, in part probably because they didn't have draft animals.

I wonder why they didn't do what the scandinavians did with reindeer, and use deer for draft animals?

[edsheppa]

OTOH, it sure as heck took a long time for ''superior cultures'' to decipher the Incan calculator.

Huge difference. Numerical and language systems are quite arbitrary. The wheel and other physical systems are not.

[Cronos]

OTOH, it sure as heck took a long time for ''superior cultures'' to decipher the Incan calculator

Quite correct. THey may not have had any use for a wheel in mountainous terrain. the Sumerians and Indo-Europeans who used the wheels in their chariots would have found it useful in the flatlands of northern India, the Msopotamian valley and the steppe region. The Inuit (Eskimos) would have had no use for the wheel either.