22,000-year-old tracks are earliest evidence of transport vehicles

Gently curving tracks preserved in New Mexico could be evidence of one of the earliest-known uses of transport technology: handcarts without wheels, called travois. The tracks were found alongside footprints that the same team earlier revealed could be around 22,000 years old — if so, they are the oldest evidence of human settlement in the Americas, setting the date thousands of years earlier than other timelines. Researchers built their own travois and dragged them through sand to reproduce a pattern that they say might indicate “adults pulled the simple, probably improvised travois, while a group of children tagged along to the side and behind”.