Archaeologists excavating parts of White Sands National Park in New Mexico found evidence of extremely old vehicles, perhaps the oldest evidence of human vehicles ever discovered.
Publishing their findings in the scientific journal Quaternary Science Advances, the researchers say they found evidence of ancient drag marks and footprints dating back 22,000 years.
The vehicle was likely a travois, essentially a pair of sticks tied together that are attached to a horse or a person that can then have cargo loaded onto it. The travois predates the first wheel by nearly 20,000 years.
The travois itself is not a startling discovery. They’ve been found in cultures all over the world. But the drag marks indicating the use of a travois provide archaeologists and historians with a clearer idea of just how long this simple yet effective means of transport has been around.
The drag marks left behind by this ancient travois extend for dozens of meters and were found in a dried mud bed in what used to be a lake. The researchers suspect the nearby footprints were left by a mixture of adults and children.
“Many people will be familiar with pushing a shopping trolley around a supermarket, moving from location to location with children hanging on,” lead author Matthew Bennett, a professor at Bournemouth University in the U.K., said in a statement. “This appears to be the ancient equivalent, but without wheels.”
Look up a picture of a travois and you’ll find dozens of pictures of them being operated by horses and even dogs. What you won’t find is many pictures of one being operated by a person. This particular travois seems like it was being pulled by a person.
This fairly small discovery of an ancient vehicle seems nifty but insignificant until you consider its wider implications. We used to think that people entered the Americas 15,000 years ago. These footprints and drag marks indicate that people were walking through New Mexico with rudimentary vehicles 7,000 years before that.
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