Archaeologists have discovered the trails of what may be the world’s earliest vehicles, having etched their tracks in well-preserved mud around 22,000 years ago. Additionally, the primitive conveyances weren’t being pulled by someone from an Old World culture, but instead by people in North America—thousands of years before anyone was supposed to be there.
Uncovered in New Mexico’s White Sands National Park, these preserved tracks, accompanied by the footprints of their human users, were found preserved in dried mud dated to 22,000 years ago. The tracks appear to have been made by a type of sledge that is today called a travois, a simple vehicle consisting of a pair of wooden poles fastened together in either a V or X configuration, and pulled by the two handles formed by the ends of the poles in front. Although these simple vehicles have been extensively used by North America’s Indigenous peoples for millennia, the age of these tracks predate the earliest known use of the wheel by 17,000 years.
“There’s nothing this old,” according to study author Matthew Bennett, a Professor of Environmental and Geographical Sciences at the University of Bournemouth.
“The drag-marks extend for dozens of meters before disappearing beneath overlying sediment,” Bennett elaborated; some of the surviving ruts extend for as long as 50 meters (164 feet). “They clip barefoot human tracks along their length, suggesting the user dragged the travois over their own footprints as they went along.”
“We believe the footprints and drag-marks tell a story of the movement of resources at the edge of this former wetland,” Bennett and his co-author, Sally Christine Reynolds, describe in an article published in The Conversation. “Adults pulled the simple, probably improvised travois, while a group of children tagged along to the side and behind.”
Aside from extending the use of simple vehicles even further back in history, the presence of humans in New Mexico at such an early date offers more evidence that of the arrival of people in the Americas occurred much earlier than what is commonly assumed in archaeology, based on the assumption that human habitation only began with the opening of an ice-free corridor in the Laurentide ice sheet 15,000 years ago.
“The peopling of the Americas debate is a very controversial one, but we’re fairly confident about the dates,” Bennett asserted in an interview with New Scientist. “The traditional story is that the ice sheets parted and they came, but you can come through before the door closes, too.”
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These first people that came 22,000 years ago, does anyone know what their genetic origin/makeup is? I think it’s controversial because I was always told the first people to come to America, are what we call the Native Americans (or Indians) today. But recently, I heard that the first people might have been of a different race – what makes it so difficult is that archeologists are almost always never allowed to investigate on tribal lands – respecting the current elders wishes to not disturb their ancestors. I am curious to know if the first people were indeed ancestors of Native American peoples, or some other race that was eventually supplanted by people coming later. If we knew, that would be a game changer, I think. But not to get all political and off-topic my current feeling is that it is hypocritical for me to be against current immigration, whether legal or not, to the U.S. because look at what we did to the Native Americans! (Trail of Tears, forced schooling and abuse, etc.). Talk about the kettle calling the teapot black!
Unfortunately, although there is a fair amount of evidence that humans were present in North America tens of thousands of years before the end of the Pleistocene, there appears to be little in the way of remains of the inhabitants themselves, just tools and other artifacts.
The idea of North America’s Indigenous cultures being the “first” to be on the continent was borne from the outdated idea that no humans could have pushed south from Beringia any earlier than about 12-15kya, but there is ample evidence that there were previous cultures that migrated here long before that, including indications that there were early tool users present in modern day Southern California as far back as 130,000 years ago, implying that they were a hominid other than H. sapiens.
It might be more appropriate, then, when looking at the modern paradigm of contact between Indigenous Americans and colonial Europeans that Native cultures were here first, rather than being the first peoples–basically, the term “first” still counts.
From what I understand, Native peoples don’t consider this to be a competition, or that even more ancient cultures might diminish their ancestry of the land, but rather hold solidarity with these peoples, even though they aren’t even considered taxonomically human, an attitude that the rest of us would be wise to adopt.