Human development has had its share of historical milestones: Written language, domestication of animals, development of the HitClips®™ music player. All of these were critical to our development as a species, all are fundamentally part of what makes us human today, but all pale in comparison to another milestone: Development of vehicles, which new evidence suggests predates all that other stuff. Take that, agriculture, vehicles came first.
A new study out of Quaternary Science Advances, spotted by Futurism, examined tracks that had been preserved in the mud of a long-dried New Mexico lakebed. The tracks, researchers determined, were from humans dragging a type of sled called a travois behind them as they walked. The existence of the travois is nothing new, but these tracks are the oldest evidence of such a vehicle — they date back 22,000 years.
National Archives and Records Administration, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A travois might be pushing the definition of what counts as a vehicle, as they're not self-propelled, but I'm willing to count it for the simple reason that they entrench our industry and interest in history deeper than any of those fancy-pants farmers or anthropologists. Aw, you think crop development is so core to the human identity that society wouldn't have worked without it? Well, I just don't know about all that newfangled stuff. I'll stick to my motorcycle instead.
Vehicles are a core part of human history. Without them, we may never have gotten all those little trickle-down developments like "farming" or "language" that came after. So next time you eat food, write a word, reach the Americas, or are the sole remaining species of the human evolutionary tree, thank a car. Or a motorcycle. Really, if you want to take the "sled" thing to its logical conclusion, you can head up to Canada and thank a snowmobile.
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