Constructing a building: A person on the bottom fills a bucket with cement, who then hands it off to a person standing on a platform 6 feet above them, who then hands the bucket to a person on a platform 6 feet above them, who then hands it to a person above them (about 4 or 5 platforms high, I can’t remember). Have they never heard of the pulley?
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When you have 1.2 BILLION people, who needs a pulley? Where is room for a pulley?
We all look at the world through our own cultural lenses. From my time elsewhere I found that although we value individual initiative and problem solving, many other cultures do not, and this extends also to some of the inner-city facilities here I’ve worked in. The main thing for many people, in order to survive, is to fit in and not make anyone angry by challenging the status quo.
Regarding the cattle in the middle of the town, I would expect that would be to repel predators or discourage thieves.
An engineer I worked with had been in China building a coal fired power plant. When he left, the coal delivery system was set up to operate automatically.
Two years later he returned to do some more work there. All that automatic coal delivery system had been replaced by coolies and coal carts.