The oldest traces of land transportation have been discovered in the United States.

Thousands of years ago, the area now known as White Sands in New Mexico was the bottom of the ancient Otero Lake. After it dried up, gypsum deposits were left behind, preserving traces of animals and humans who lived towards the end of the last Ice Age (which concluded around 12,000 years ago).

For a long time, one of the mysteries of archaeology was the transportation technologies of ancient peoples inhabiting North America. Historical and ethnographic data indicated that many Indigenous peoples used travois—simple structures made from long poles connected by a wooden crossbeam. These were intended for transporting loads, pulled by either humans or animals. However, wood decays quickly, and no direct evidence of their use in deep antiquity has yet been found.

In 2019, a team of British researchers led by Matthew Bennett from Bournemouth University discovered long, narrow tracks in the park that resembled furrows made by primitive structures. Nearby, there were also human footprints.

Bennett and his colleagues conducted a series of excavations. In some areas, they found single lines—likely from triangular structures being pulled with one hand. In other places, there were parallel furrows: perhaps the ancient inventors crossed poles in an X shape for stability. In both cases, the tracks intersected with barefoot footprints left by those hauling the loads.

By comparing these furrows with experimental reconstructions, the researchers concluded that they were made by travois—the first "trucks" of the Stone Age.

Interestingly, alongside the main tracks, there are often parallel chains of small footprints. Scientists suggested that these belonged to children who assisted adults in carrying loads or walked alongside for safety. Unlike later cultures, the inhabitants of White Sands did not use animals—all travois were moved solely by human muscle power (no animal tracks were found nearby).

Dating of the deposits using optical stimulated luminescence (OSL dating) confirmed the age of the tracks—21,000 to 23,000 years. If this is indeed the case, the discovered furrows would represent the oldest evidence of transportation—thousands of years earlier than previously thought. This alters our understanding of migrations and the daily lives of Ice Age peoples: they not only carried loads on themselves but also created technologies for transporting them.

Bennett's team's discovery challenges the traditional theory of the settlement of North and South America. It was previously believed that people entered the continent only about 16,000 years ago, when the ice sheet in Alaska began to melt. However, the findings at White Sands and other recent discoveries (such as a site in Mexico dating back 33,000 years) present a different picture: the first migrants likely arrived much earlier.

It is noteworthy that our distant ancestors were already using transportation in prehistoric times. It is believed that the first primitive means of transport—rafts and boats—emerged when people started crossing rivers and lakes.

A particularly significant milestone was the invention of the wheel, which opened a new era in the development of transportation. Recent archaeological data indicate that the wheel was invented by the inhabitants of the Carpathian Mountains about six thousand years ago.

The scientific work has been published in the journal Quaternary Science Advances.