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22,000-Year-Old Evidence of Transport Technology Reshapes Our Understanding of the Ancient Americas
The Debrief ^ | February 25, 2025 | Ryan Whalen

Posted on 03/01/2025 10:28:01 AM PST by SunkenCiv

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of ancient transport technology in the Americas, suggesting that early North Americans used travois-like sleds for transport nearly 22,000 years ago.

New findings by Bournemouth University researchers Matthew Robert Bennett, a Professor of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, and Sally Christine Reynolds, an Associate Professor in Hominin Palaeoecology, identifies the use of simple handcarts, possessing no wheels, that were employed during the late Ice Age near modern day White Sands, New Mexico.

The adoption of such a device significantly predates the first known use of the wheel, which is believed to have occured in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago...

The footprints sit at the bottom of a dry lake bed, reminders of an ancient time when New Mexico was not a desert, but had been covered in wetlands. The fossilized footprints are referred to as ichnofossils or "trace fossils," meaning they retain evidence of ancient life but do not preserve an organism...

Taking their theory with them to White Sands, Bennett and Reynolds discovered what appeared to be drag marks near the trace fossil footprints. In some instances, only one trace was found, while parallel tracks were identified in others. The drag marks extend for dozens of meters before being obscured by overlying sediment...

Accompanied by human footprints, the emerging picture seems to suggest that the ancient carriers dragged this form of transport technology behind them at White Sands. Adding further weight to the discovery, the researchers note that Indigenous cultures of the Great Plains carried on the tradition of using travois-like sleds in this manner.

(Excerpt) Read more at thedebrief.org ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: footprints; godsgravesglyphs; lakeotero; newmexico; pleistocene; travois; tularosabasin; whitesands
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To: piasa

There were repeated wave of different peoples entering North America and displacing or absorbing the previous - the Lenape peoples were the last wave before the European wave.


21 posted on 03/01/2025 11:38:10 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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To: jerod

But they could drag things around ... most likely by hooking up their women and children to do the dragging ...

the chinese were still doing that when i visited in 1981: i saw women pulling wooden plows for farmers too poor to own an “iron mule”, a multi-purpose single-cylinder, single-axle contrivance ...


22 posted on 03/01/2025 11:50:31 AM PST by catnipman ((A Vote For The Lesser Of Two Evils Still Counts As A Vote For Evil))
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Transport Technology? Why the big words.

Its a simple travois, used by humans and also adaptable to horses much later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travois


23 posted on 03/01/2025 11:53:30 AM PST by Candor7 (Ask not for whom the Trump Trolls,He trolls for thee!),<img src="" width=500</img><a href="">tag</a>)
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To: SkyDancer

Color me skeptical.


24 posted on 03/01/2025 11:57:30 AM PST by gundog (The ends justify the mean tweets. )
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To: Ronaldus Magnus III

The Clovis limit is arbitrary; prior to radiocarbon (about 1950) the floor date for the settlement of the Americas was about 1000 BC. It’s odd that the left doesn’t realize / acknowledge that “colonizing” in the sciences very much includes isolationism / Clovis-first-and-only for Precolumbian America.


25 posted on 03/01/2025 11:58:07 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: Reily
Re: "Written language"

Perhaps I should have said there were no significant libraries or repositories for business contracts in the New World in 1500?

26 posted on 03/01/2025 12:20:15 PM PST by zeestephen (Trump Landslide? Kamala lost the election by 230,000 votes, in WI, MI, and PA.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Dirt bikes. The cannibalistic prehistoric tribes had dirt bike races there. Note the faint tread marks about 4 inches above the top end of the ruler down in the rut.


27 posted on 03/01/2025 12:23:55 PM PST by PAR35
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To: gundog

https://kolbecenter.org/tracking-humans-on-the-cretaceous-rocks-of-texas-paluxy-river/


28 posted on 03/01/2025 12:29:35 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Am Yisrael Chai ~)
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To: zeestephen

There were for the Aztecs! However, the Spaniards pretty much destroyed them. For the Mayans, I guess it means in how you define that. Certainly, many deciphered and yet to be deciphered texts of the exploits of Mayan “kings’.


29 posted on 03/01/2025 12:38:43 PM PST by Reily (a)
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To: SkyDancer

Mud and snow both distort tracks in the short term. 100 plus million years later....


30 posted on 03/01/2025 12:43:38 PM PST by gundog (The ends justify the mean tweets. )
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To: gundog

Pretty good impression of a human foot with dinosaur print in solid rock don’t ya think?


31 posted on 03/01/2025 12:53:01 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Am Yisrael Chai ~)
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To: SkyDancer; gundog
Pretty good impression of a human foot with dinosaur print in solid rock don’t ya think?

That big toe left a very deep impression.

I think someone should make a comparable modern clay mold of a human stride of maybe 25 feet, both walking at a leisurely pace and also running.

32 posted on 03/01/2025 1:00:24 PM PST by thecodont
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Because there were no horses or other species of draft animals in the Americas at that time. And since it appears that the terrain was wetlands, wheeled carts, etc would have just gotten stuck in mud enough to make them impractical-sled-like vehicles made more sense. Necessity is the mother of invention, etc...


33 posted on 03/01/2025 1:02:51 PM PST by Texan5 ("You've got to saddle up your boys, you've got to draw a hard line"... )
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To: zeestephen

Many Native/indigenous Americans had “written” language-similar to those in Egypt-having hieroglyphics and other symbols. At least one of them has been deciphered. Since they were using their skills at working metal for making jewelry and other intricate objects out of gold and silver, I’m pretty sure they were working metal-just not iron into weapons, etc...


34 posted on 03/01/2025 1:19:13 PM PST by Texan5 ("You've got to saddle up your boys, you've got to draw a hard line"... )
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To: catnipman
I worked in China Fall '76 to Spring '77 in a fertilizer plant being built in Shuifu village in Yunnan Province on the Yangtze River. When I arrived, there were men hauling barges up the river using towlines. I couldn't believe my eyes.

They built an enormous dam there and now river navigation is all with modern freighters. I don't recognize the place in the photos!

Shuifu, Yunnan, China

35 posted on 03/01/2025 1:33:37 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (Democrats who say ‘no one is above the law’ won’t mind going to prison for the money they stole)
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To: SunkenCiv

The “SCIENCE” shoulda been named “yoga” because it likes to streeeeeetch


36 posted on 03/01/2025 1:59:09 PM PST by Theophilus (covfefe)
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To: piasa
...the average person today couldn’t...

...nail two boards together or start a fire without matches. When I told high school students that I make gears on my milling machine at home, one responded, "I thought you had to buy those things".

37 posted on 03/01/2025 2:05:48 PM PST by GingisK
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To: catnipman
...a multi-purpose single-cylinder, single-axle contrivance...

Those look like giant rotor-tillers with a power take-off. Very versatile.

38 posted on 03/01/2025 2:09:05 PM PST by GingisK
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To: thecodont

In solid rock.


39 posted on 03/01/2025 2:22:47 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Am Yisrael Chai ~)
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To: PAR35

I’m too polite to say I think you’re hallucinating there...


40 posted on 03/01/2025 2:44:39 PM PST by null and void (Americans are a people increasingly separated by our connectivity. H/T MortMan)
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