The gypsum dunes of White Sands National Park in New Mexico are already famous for preserving some of the oldest human footprints in North America. Now, researchers have uncovered something even more remarkable: a set of puzzling linear traces — long, straight grooves in the earth — that may be evidence of the earliest known form of man-made vehicles.
These marks, preserved alongside footprints in ancient sediment, could be the remnants of travois — primitive sled-like devices used to haul heavy loads. If correct, this discovery pushes back the earliest known use of such technology to around 22,000 years ago, at the height of the Last Glacial Maximum. That’s thousands of years earlier than previously thought, making these the oldest vehicle tracks ever discovered.
Tracks and human vehicles
A travois is essentially a cart without wheels. It’s not the most efficient way of carrying things around but it beats putting stuff on your back. It’s also probably the best thing available to people in North America 22,000 years ago.
The new study, led by geographer Matthew Bennett and a team from several universities in the US, analyzed three distinct types of traces found at White Sands. Some are simple, narrow grooves stretching for meters across the playa. Others are broad, shallow furrows that appear to have been dragged repeatedly. The most intriguing are parallel pairs of grooves, spaced at a consistent distance, resembling the marks left by a sled or travois.
These traces are closely linked with human footprints. Sometimes, a footprint is cleanly bisected by a groove, as if something had been dragged over it. Strikingly, these marks do not correspond with the tracks of mammoths, sloths, or other Ice Age animals, ruling out an animal-based explanation. While we have used animals to drag sleds for millennia, at this site, humans were doing all the pulling.
So, researchers started thinking about what human activity could have caused the tracks. They looked at animal dragging behavior, fallen logs, even boat keels — but none fit as well as the idea of humans using simple sleds to haul goods. There’s another important clue: the presence of small children’s footprints. This suggests this was a group activity rather than lone individuals.
Recreating ancient technology
The findings offer a rare window into the lives of Ice Age people. The presence of children’s footprints near the travois marks suggests that families traveled together, possibly teaching younger generations how to transport goods. Some of the tracks even show a pattern that might indicate children playing or running alongside the travois.
But researchers didn’t just look at track marks. To test their hypothesis, they reconstructed the scenario of White Sands by dragging loads across wet mudflats.
They built simple travois replicas using wooden poles, some arranged in a “V” shape, others in an “X” shape. Volunteers pulled these structures across soft ground, recording the footprints and grooves they left behind. They even had a kid tag along.
This experiment showed that V-shaped travois produced deep, single grooves, often intersecting footprints. Meanwhile, X-shaped travois left parallel grooves, precisely like those at White Sands. The researchers also found that padding the contact point of the travois with cloth or soft material reduced drag, making transport easier. This was the last piece of the puzzle. The White Sands traces were made by humans dragging loads in a controlled manner. And, most likely, they used an early form of travois.
The study was published in the journal Quaternary Science Advances.
