A remarkable discovery at White Sands National Park, New Mexico, suggests that early humans in North America may have been using wooden sled-like devices over 20,000 years ago—long before the invention of the wheel.
Researchers have found ancient footprints alongside deep drag marks, indicating that the first Americans might have pulled heavy loads using wooden frames similar to later Indigenous travois. This discovery, published in Quaternary Science Advances, adds a new dimension to our understanding of prehistoric movement and survival strategies.
Drag Marks Reveal a Prehistoric Transport Method
At the site, scientists uncovered a series of human footprints accompanied by long, parallel marks stretching over 50 meters (165 feet). The patterns suggest that adults were pulling wooden structures, while children walked nearby. Indigenous experts consulted for the study noted that these marks closely resemble travois, a wooden sled-like transport tool used by Plains tribes thousands of years later.
“Many people will be familiar with pushing a shopping trolley around a supermarket, moving from location to location with children hanging on,” said study lead author Matthew Bennett, a professor at Bournemouth University. “This appears to be the ancient equivalent, but without wheels.”
These findings offer the first concrete evidence of how early humans moved supplies, food, and possibly even people across vast landscapes before horses and wheeled carts became available.
To test their hypothesis, the research team constructed wooden travois replicas and dragged them across mudflats in the U.K. and along the coast of Maine. The results were striking—the newly created tracks perfectly matched the fossilized drag marks at White Sands.
This experiment provides strong support for the idea that prehistoric people in North America had already developed sled-like transport solutions to navigate Ice Age environments.
Challenging the Timeline of Human Arrival in the Americas
The discovery at White Sands also ties into the ongoing debate over when humans first arrived in North America. Earlier estimates placed the first migrations at 13,000 to 16,000 years ago, but previous dating of footprints at this site suggests humans were present between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago—a timeline that dramatically rewrites history.
While some researchers remain skeptical of the dating methods, the study authors emphasize that these newly discovered transport marks are significant regardless of their exact age.
“Every discovery that we uncover in White Sands adds to our understanding of the lives of the first people to settle in the Americas,” co-author of the new study Sally Reynolds, a mammalian paleontologist at Bournemouth University, said in the statement. “These people were the first migrants to travel to North America and understanding more about how they moved around is vital to being able to tell their story.”
Each new find at White Sands reveals more about the first humans to walk across North America, shedding light on how they adapted to their surroundings. This discovery not only provides a glimpse into how they transported goods but also raises new questions about their daily lives and long-distance migrations. Could there be even more advanced transport methods buried beneath the sands of time?
