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Function

The functions of wheeled effigies are not known. Since they were no longer being made at the time of the Spanish Conquest, we lack ethnohistoric accounts to guide our interpretations. Elkholm (1946) considered them to be toys but did not explain his reasoning, while Boggs (1973) and most recent writers think they were probably ritual objects employed in adult ceremonial contexts. We agree, and can cite two lines of evidence which supports this view. The Tres Zapotes and Nopiloa figurines were found in dedicatory caches associated with mound construction, a highly unlikely context for children's toys; . . . .If wheeled figurines were used in rituals at Tula, precisely how were they used? In what kind of rituals were they employed? And were the rituals conducted at temples or in the privacy of individual homes? Their occurrence in midden deposits at two separate locales at the at the N edge of Tula indicates that the rituals were conducted at more than one place. But we cannot identify the specific origin of the debris in the middens, nor can we assume that the trash associated with our buildings was created by their inhabitants. Most of the debris found on an above house floors was deposited after the houses were abandoned, probably by residents of near-by structures, so the objects in them, including the figurines, were almost certainly used at spots close to our excavations. Since there were both large temple mounds and abandoned houses adjacent to both excavations, either type of building is a possible source. But Acosta did not report any wheeled figurines from his extensive excavations of Tula's major temples, which suggests a household use rather than involvement in a temple cult.

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A final issue is why Mesoamerican Indians never adopted the wheel as a practical transportation device a step which seems so natural form our technologically oriented world-view that we have difficulty comprehending why it did not occur. However, anthropologists have long known that most 'unexplainable' facets of human culture are the result of factors which are quite logical once they are known. We believe that a set of environmental and cultural factors so reduced the potential advantages of the wheel that it was not adopted. Our ideas in this regard are not new; . . . [the absence of] draught animals and appropriate terrain, inhibited and probably prohibited the development of wheeled transportation.

The absence of draught animals was the major obstacle. Wheeled vehicles laden with cargo offer no substantial advantages over human porters. If they must be propelled by people, particularly over long distances and on sloping or broken terrain. This is especially true of the very heavy vehicles with solid wooden wheels and axles, the earliest type known in the Old world and logically the first types in the technological evolution of vehicles. Animal traction is essential.

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