“Our research team has spent many hours discussing the possible origins of these linear features with the Indigenous people involved in our research as collaborators,” researchers wrote, adding that “the most likely explanation” of the marks is that they were made by “some form of travois”.
The most plausible explanation for the trace fossils, researchers said, is that they were “drag marks formed by travois consisting of a single pole or crossed poles pulled by humans”.
Archaeologists in New Mexico have uncovered what could be trace marks left by the oldest known hand-drawn carts, predating the invention of the wheel by thousands of years.
Now, archaeologists digging in New Mexico’s White Sands have found what seem to be nearly 22,000-year-old drag marks made by the ends of wooden poles.
Recent research has raised questions about the exact time and place humans began widely using the wheel, with one study pointing to its invention by eastern European copper miners as early as 3900BC.
