Archaeologists Discovered 22,000-Year-Old Tracks That May Be From the

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A new study highlights the evidence for the prominence of a prehistoric vehicle in New Mexico.
New Mexico’s White Sands National Park continues to turn up fresh perspectives on ancestral history.
Tracks of footprints followed by tracks made by wooden poles show how this wheelbarrow-like device played a vital role for ancient inhabitants.

In a new study published in Quaternary Science Advances, scholars describe tracks found in New Mexico’s White Sands National Park that were created by one or more wooden poles following footprints. Likely, these tracks show “one of the simplest prehistoric vehicles.”

They also serve as evidence of one of the oldest vehicles of all time—what’s known as a travois. The linear tracks from the poles and human footprints both date to roughly 22,000 years ago..

“Basically, it’s a wheelbarrow without the wheel,” said Matthew Bennett, study author from the University of Bournemouth, according to the New Scientist. The wheel was invented independently in a number of areas, with the earliest dating to around 4500 B.C.—well after the tracks found in New Mexico were made.

The travois, then, is an example of non-wheel transport. “There’s nothing this old,” Bennett said. “[Tracks like this] occur in lots of different areas [of White Sands National Park], so it was widespread. It’s not just one inventive family using a travois.”

The travois was likely so ubiquitous within the culture that there were differing styles of use. The tracks show some examples—some with two lines and others with a single line. The single-line version could have been made by two pieces of wood forming a triangle, with the pieces held by the driver and the joined portion being the only point hitting the ground. The longest tracks are 164 feet in length, while the shortest is just over six feet.

Other examples of travois tracks hidden in the Pleistocene sediment feature two parallel lines—likely from an X-shaped travois with two handles and two points of ground contact. Scholars believe that the X-shape would have provided more stability than the triangle design.

New Mexico’s fossil record is rewriting the history of humans in America. A study published in 2024 dates footprints found in the area to more than 23,000 years old, confirming an earlier study. Examining tracks (and their age) provides modern scientists a window into ancient life.

In the latest window, we get a better understanding of transport. The historic record of the footprints shows that, typically, one person dragged the travois along the ground. That said, they may have had cheerleaders along with way, as child-sized footprints were sometimes found to the side—or in the middle—of the drag marks.

While animals have been used to pull sleds elsewhere across the world, the study highlights that that humans were the sole travois drivers in New Mexico.

“This unique footprint record,” the study authors wrote, “may represent one of the earliest pieces of evidence for the use of transport technology.”

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