Nah, BIG snakes slithering through the mud left that track.
“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.” WHAT?? HUH?? The climate changed? All by itself? How could that be?
I would have been really impressed if they have found evidence of a 22,000 year old wheel. Why did the Mesopotamians invent the wheel and not the Native Americans? Native Americans had 5,000 more years after the Mesopotamians invented the wheel to invent it themselves. How could a civilization go on for 5,000 more years and NOT invent a wheel?
Native Americans in Mexico did invent the wheel, but only used them on toys as far as we can tell.
Even if they had attempted to scale them up and use them on carts they would not have been of much use on the grass prairies and savannahs or in the deep woods without draft animals like oxen and horses, which is probably why they used the travois, which is much more effective in high grass, marsh, and scrub.
They did, but only used it on childrens’ toys.
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
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...
They had reservations about such things