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WHEELED TOYS

The French explorer, Desire Charnay, explored an Indian cemetery in Popocatepetl, Mexico, in 1880 and found a toy animal so constructed that the four discs found with the dog or coyote fit perfectly as wheels. (Photograph No. 1)

In 1940, Matthew Stirling (an archaeologist who has concentrated his studies on the wheel) discovered eight wheels in Tres Zapotes, Vera Cruz. The wheels seemed to be clay discs which were used to make the pottery toys mobile. Along side the wheels were found a pottery dog and a pottery jaguar, each with two tubes attached to their feet. The wheels were held together two-by-two by wooden axles and that passed through adobe tubes, which were attached to the animals' front and fear legs. On a second expedition, Stirling found twelve more discs which he took to be three sets of wheel for toy figurines.

He summarizes his findings: "It doesn't appear likely that having known the principle of the wheel for five centuries it never occurred to them to use it in a more general way."

Once in the National Museum of Mexico there were some small metal dogs displayed which contained circular perforations in their fore feet. Dr. Alfonso Caso classifies them as Panamanian.

Lately in Mexico and even in the southern United States, numerous adobe wheels with center perforations have been found. There is a possibility that they could be discs for sewing on clothing or could have been used in hairdos or for spindle whorls or wheels.

J. Eric S. Thompson, a renowned researcher, states, " . . . the concept of the wheel for the representation of the calendrical material is, without doubt, pre-Columbian."

Dr. Gordon F. Ekholm, a director of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, reports

During the winter of 1942, while I was making some excavations in Panuco and in the vicinity of Tampico, I found a certain number of small discs that I suspected of having been the wheels of rolling toys like those found by Dr. Stirling in Tres Zapotes and in Charnay and Popocatepetl. In the excavations of Panuco I felt most happy when my helper informed me of the finding of a complete toy with wheels just after having left the place myself and only a few meters from my excavation. This finding, together with the other known examples, convinced me that the Mexican Indians, before the conquest, had made small vehicles with wheels in the form of animals and therefore had some knowledge of the principle of the wheel.

In 1960 Hasso Von Winning reported the discovery in Central America of eighteen figurines presumably mounted on wheels. In addition to these, the author has noted two more figurines now in the Museum of the American Indian in New York, five wheeled toys in the Stendahl collection at Los Angeles, three in the Los Angeles County Museum, and two in his own collection. It is estimated that there are at least thirty or more examples of pre-Columbian wheeled toys that have been unearthed in Central America.

Dr. M. W. Jakeman of Brigham Young University has stated

There can now be little question but that the principle of the wheel was known and utilized in ancient America, at least in the case of toys. And it seems likely that these apparent playthings are fashioned in imitation of larger vehicles used in a workday life of the children's elders.

The wheeled toy is definitely found in the Old world in the Mesopotamian area. They are approximately the same size as the ones in the New World, possessing hollow bodies and crudely-made wheels which might be mistaken for spindle whorls.

It appears that the American specimens found thus far have not been dated earlier than 200 A.D., which is significantly pre-Columbian, although most of the European wheeled toys have considerably earlier dating. This time gap was shortened considerably with the report of a wheeled toy located in Old Corinth, Greece, and dated in the first century A.D.

The suggestion that there were manufactured toys which used a basic mechanical principle not in practical use in a larger model is not probable. in fact, this idea is extremely uncommon in the so-called primitive cultures in the world. If we consider the nearly universal use of dolls which are miniatures of people or animals and small so-called items common to everyday life (such as pottery vessels, grinding stones, or weapons), it is noteworthy that we have not found any toys in a culture which were not at least partially replicas of the larger, practical model.

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