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 ...
Ichnofossil markings accompanying ancient human footprints at White Sands, New Mexico, suggests the use of the travois, a simple transport technology resembling a sled, nearly 22,000 years agoCredit: Bennett, Reynolds, et al/Quaternary Science Advances/Science Direct
Thanks for the link!
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?
Just another example of how ‘stone aged’ the indigenous populations of North and South America were. They didn’t have bronze or iron metals, they didn’t have wheels and they didn’t even have horses... They apparently ate them all long before civilization arrived in 1492.
But they could drag things around... That’s pretty cool.
That could be the track of a one legged cross country skier...
I have been amazed that the idea of the wheel occurred to no one in the western hemisphere.
The wheel is easy
It is getting the axel right that is difficult.
There were/is tracks of human foot prints crossing across some sort of huge reptile all frozen in rock in Texas, dates back thousands of centuries.
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.
Early rickshaws? That would give the homeless something to do.
Indigenous Americans also avoided inventing a written language for 5,000 years.
And, indigenous Americans were thousands of years behind Europe in metallurgy.
Thanks. I did a lot more digging into the invention of the wheel and learned what you pointed out — it wasn’t much use in wet, marshy or forested places. You needed cultures that grew large enough cities to need to bulk-transport things like food to even have a need for the wheel.
When I had a double college major of Spanish and Archaeology, I was amused that the textbooks of the time stated humans came across the Bering Straight 10,000 years ago. I immediately knew that people had entered North America earlier than that, we just had not found the evidence yet. One of the wondrous and frustrating parts of the archaeology is that we know there is more evidence under our feet.
While I was privileged to actually excavate on the US West Coast, and even in Central America, I soon learned that archaeology cannot pay a mortgage, or any other bill for that matter.
While we no longer travel in Mexico, the Mexico City subway system was fun. When you are walking from train to train, you use these walkway tunnels. Mexico City is the ancient Aztec capital. When they were built the subway and walkways, when they came upon something Aztec, they would clear off the object and label it. Passersby could stop and enjoy it.
Aztecs & Toltecs had the Nahuatl script
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_script
The Mayan has a script (Maya glyphs) that is hieroglyphic in nature. It is the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_script
As far as the wheel goes, some theorize that without a large strong draft animal no need for a wheel. Also, with plenty of slaves available, no need for ease of transport. They did have wheels on what looks like children’s toys.
The Incas had no written language. They had a way of keeping records with a knotted rope system called Quipu. Not a real written language.
lol
We’re getting older here.
10 years ago there would have been a picture of a transporter from Star Trek in no time :)
Well these are actual human footprints.
The canoe, both the dugout, and the various bark types, was effective enough in the most inhabited parts of the continent, due to the vast number of rivers, lakes and streams, for them to have lively trading networks and communications networks.
That is why for many years, explorers, trappers, and settlers adopted Indian canoes as well- they were simply economical and practical.
Most men living today wouldn’t be able to make even the crudest dugout and would have no idea how to prepare and utilize materials for making the more elaborate fine birchbark canoe, certainly no idea how to cut and bend the components, assemble, stitch and waterproof one.
In the northwest no need for roads and wheels, either- so they developed huge wooden watercraft to go whaling and fishing and trading...and slaving.
The same goes for the specialized clothing and equipment of Arctic peoples, and their seafaring kayak- the average person today couldn’t begin to fashion one.
Or the bundled reed canoes which are probably the simplest and easiest.
Maybe today a guy could make a bullboat without calling for help.
But in North America the people did lack the repeated waves of invasion, occupation and conquest that drove technological achievements in other parts of the world. There were minor conflicts and battles before European settlement, but nothing major North of Mexico involving tens of thousands of soldiers.
Without the endless invasions and intercontinental conflicts Europe and the Middle East and the far east would be just as primitive. New and different knowledge and technologies would not have been imposed, stolen or exchanged at such high rates, absent the pressure of organized warfare and conquest and enslavement.
They did, but only used it on childrens’ toys.
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