Other ideas or inventions missing from pre-Columbian societies were coined money, ethical monotheism, the idea of the experiment and, in general, writing. There were no kilns–and therefore no glazed pottery, and no stringed instruments. Several of these missing elements–draft animals, large sailing vessels, writing, coined money–would all have limited economic development, in particular trade and the accumulation of surpluses. We have already seen that what surpluses were produced were as often as not dissipated in elaborate rituals for the dead and this difference in economic development,
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