For example, wheels were invented in Mesoamerica, and llamas were domesticated in the central Andes by 3000 B.C., but 5,000 years later the Americas’ sole beast of burden and sole wheels had still not encountered each other, even though the distance separating Mesoamerica’s Maya societies from the northern border of the Inca Empire (1,200 miles) was far less than the 8,000 miles separating wheel- and horse-sharing France and China.
