'CART RUTS' Close-Up! What Were They Really For?
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- čas přidán 21. 10. 2022
- 'Cart rut' is the name given to two parallel tracks worn or purposefully carved into the bedrock during ancient times, but that are unlikely to have been created by or for wheeled carts! They are a puzzling ancient mystery because no-one knows what they were for or exactly how old they are. Although they are found in many different locations, the Maltese islands have more than anywhere else which is even more perplexing considering the small size of the archipelago.
In this video I explore the most famous set of 'cart ruts' in Malta. Known as Clapham Junction, they are a confusing series of criss-crossing 'cart ruts' carved or worn into limestone that, in places, look like the switches of a modern-day railway track. I also discuss the geology of Malta and the main ideas that have been proposed by experts to explain these strange grooves. Join me as I visit this fascinating site which may date back to the Bronze Age or even further!
#ancienthistory #ancientmysteries #mediterranean
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✨ REFERENCES
PChatzimpaloglou, P., Schembri, P.J., French, C., Ruffell, A. and Stoddart, S., 2020. The geology, soils and present-day environment of Gozo and Malta. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
Main, G., Gauci, R., Schembri, J.A. et al. (2022). A multi-hazard historical catalogue for the city-island-state of Malta (Central Mediterranean). Nat Hazards 114, 605-628.
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Location of cart ruts
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Do you know of any site that has an index over all the locations where cart ruts are found? From the Azores to Malta to Italy and Spain. All places the Carthaginians/Phoenecians went?
@@cholst1 that's a great question- and megaliths in various regions maybe too in her spare time 😂💖
I saw some very deep ruts with sharpe edges around 18 inches deep (well up to my knees!) Around 9 years ago, I tried to re-find them last year but I could not because they ruts were full of vegetation. I will try again in the winter and be a bit more serious on checking measurements and photography, thanks for re-igniting my interest in this fascinating subject. 😀
Was that at Clapham Junction?
Thank you Laura!
Thanks for watching!
Once you learn to spot them they are everywere.Great Video.
They certainly are! That's a crazy area just packed full of them!
I think, I have seen some in Spain on top of the castle of Monfrague, Extremadura. Only a few meters, but they look exactly like these I see here. The whole place gave me the idea, that this castle there was not the first building there.
In Deutschland gibt es Cart Ruts auf der Schwäbischen Alp. Der "Waldgeist" zeigt sie auf youtube.
A mystery for what these were made, who made them. We have tons of these in our island Malta 🇲🇹 well done for this video.
Thanks for watching!
Very interesting video on the "Clapham Junction" Cart Ruts in Malta. It must be said that Malta is a very ancient island Inhabited for a long time but very curiously I never visited this Island! Anyway it is puzzling indeed and there are ancient places with deep ruts like in India and other places but without going so far there are interesting examples like the at The Appian Way were there many traces of ruts done by endless passing of carriage, no way comparable to those those of Malta! A further consideration is the the Roman roads was subjected to a lot of mantainace, courtesy of the slaves. Yes, it is very puzzling indeed...
I've visited Roman ones such as at Pompeii and they are very clearly worn by wheeled vehicles. The ones in Malta just don't quite fit that pattern. I've also visited the ones in Sardinia that are very similar to those in Malta. In Sardinia they say they are probably Roman but I don't think so. If you look closely you can see Neolithic tombs interrupt them!
@@MegalithHunter thanks for replying and yes it doesn't fit at all with these patterns in Malta! It would be nice to have some answers from them but alas someyears has passed! Have a good day 👍
Malta was a military fortress with heavy cannons, and those cannons had to be supplied with heavy ammunitions hauled by iron wheeled wagons.
My state of Wyoming has cart ruts cut deep into the rocks made during the 1840's by settlers headed for California. The Overland trail came right across my property with many paths converging to the stage stop and river crossing a couple miles up the river from me. These trails are cut deep into the earth and can easily by see to this day.
*Let the Sunshine In...*
thanks
Interesting. Thanks Laura. I have to resist the notion that they formed any part of a pre-planned irrigation system, especially where they run down hill, however slightly sloped, because it would have drained the water away from where it was supposedly needed. An irrigation system would parallel the slope to keep water from flowing away. They could have functioned as a drainage system to remove excess water, but how could there be too much water standing on the side of a hill?
They may have been used as a sort of impromptu agricultural method, with the ruts holding soil for planting and retaining moisture after the ruts had fallen out of use (or between seasons of use?🤔). But I think this would this would only have been efficient for small groups or in places where there was a high areal density of ruts - can you imagine gardening a plot that was made up of two parallel strips 30 cm wide, but 100 meters long? ... Grape vines for Wine, maybe?? (No wonder the ruts wander and criss-cross randomly! LOL! 😂😂)
Good points Paul! There are so many sections of a rut between the areas of Naxxar and Salina Bay that archaeologists have proposed they were once connected. That means the rut was several kilometres long which kind of rules out a gardening plot too.
Hello! I’m going to throw out a wild idea. What if the inhabitants were continually cutting these channels with some sort of plow. Then they could come back and cross cut out blocks for the building of the megalithic temples. Is there any evidence that sections were removed? I doubt it. Ha! Just a crazy thought. Thanks for sharing the mystery with us Laura! 😊
yeah! what if.....? hey, Barry! just had to give me one more "what if" idea, didn't ya! my mind is chock full of 'em, now😃 lots of grist for my mill🧠 oh well, got plenty'a time to think about stuff. at least it's all interesting👍👍
This made me think of the Unfinished Obelisk and the scoop marks. Laura said in an earlier video that the cart ruts aren't megaliths but I think they are the mega-est of the megaliths. Human hands have carved along many kilometres of stone. That's a pretty big megalith in my book. You make an interesting idea but I'll play devils advocate and ask how they excavated the central blocks and why the trails seem to go on like roads rather than a central area like a quarry. To me they are too haphazard like a map to be planned quarry sites.
Thats the thing isn't it. They seem just like a map only we can't read the signs.
@@floydriebe4755 Yep, lots if interesting stuff to think about. Ha!
@@KerriEverlasting Good point. I just thought I throw one more crazy idea out. Ha!
I just saw the unfinished obelisk in its quarry, which is probably why I came up with the idea.
@@barrywalser2384 oh man. I've mixed up who suggested the irrigation. We still have no power. I'm on 2% battery. Someone drove into a power pole just up the road from us. Idk if the driver is alive but no power for 12 hrs, it doesn't look good. Sorry for mixing up the person's who suggested different ideas. I really need coffee.
Thanks for a great video. I did not realise the cart ruts were so well signposted. I assumed they were scattered in farmers fields and less accessible.
Surely they are from before the end of the ice age sea level rise.
I just got back from a DIY malter megalith tour. We saw a few coastal ones cart ruts but not many. We only had three days. The anti deluvian world is fascinating. Check out ‘legend the genesis of civilisation’.
The hypogeum and UNESCO Malta Heritage temples sites were amazing.
Thanks!
Ah appreciate it Gary!
This is wonderful, my imagination is going into overdrive.
Thanks Gary!
The standard gauge is 1435 mm. It comes from carts pulled by 2 horses. The dimension of the ruts is similar, only with a great fuzziness. So maybe the carts in Malta were pulled by 2 horses or oxen or ... - that way you would not find hoofs in the centre, but in the ruts, being smoothed by wheels.
That makes sense (isn't it funny once we become remote from the actual age of horse drawn wagons, we miss the obvious fact that we can't look for them in the middle?). I also say that provided the carts had metallic (presumably steel) rims and horses no horseshoes, obviously wheels would leave more imprint than hooves. But as the video creator nicely puts it, these ruts look very different from such elsewhere where they were evidently done by carts.
I say, to admit the obvious (tracks as a result of one drive in a self powered vehicle in a mud-like soft material) we have mechanisms that stop us pursuing such paths, otherwise we'd be very gullible to any insanity coming our way (the last time this material could have been soft was several millions years ago and at the time it was at the sea bottom, plus self-powered cars have a history of little over 120 years). But for all of this to be possible to accept, all we need is to not know some technology in the past. Why do we presume we already know every sort of ancient technology? I think I leave this open ended.
Yet what provokes me is that the obvious is easily proveable: if the material was soft at the time of ruts creation, there would have to be somewhere visible overflows of such mud, which were pressed out of the rut and relaxed around, and subsequently hardened. Also, there would be other imprints in that sloshy material, like human or animal footprints.
I think it won't give me rest till I can see it by my very eyes - the 2024 vacation is Sardinia or Malta! 🤭
We have these in the Burren region of western Ireland where it's all exposed limestone too.
Last throw of the dice; when it was last submerged a Dredger worked the surface.
Very interesting. My immediate thought was perhaps they are some kind of water channel or irrigation system? I wonder if their location (say higher to lower ground) might help to explain them? Perhaps they were originally carved as single channels and then later an adjacent channel was cut to follow the same route. I presume the newer ones should have ruts at the same depth if they were cut by carts?
hiya, Laura! i'ma gonna hafta get with the programa here! (sorry, i'vea weirda sensa huma. and, once again, i missed your premiere.) anyhoo, these cart ruts, or whatever they are, have really piqued my curiosity. they're so strange. just when i think i've got my brain wrapped around them, kinda have a hypothesis forming, i see or hear about some new theory or evidence or discovery. then i have to try to fit the new stuff in or start over. not a big deal, just trying to find a corner to scrunch it all into is, sometimes, quite a feat. AND, THEN, along comes Barry with another what if. dang! guess i'd better get a new brain! or a back-up. gee, i wonder if i could send some to the cloud.........
great show, Laura! got my mental juices flowing, that's for sure. are there any ruts showing in the less permeable rock? or are they only in the limestone? there seem to be places where the ruts have been scraped away. or are they patches of harder rock? curiouser and curiouser........
thanks, kiddo! very interesting. Bye!
Let's keep brainstorming! They're only in limestone because those of the top layers of the geological strata.
@@MegalithHunter yeah, i get that. but, what's under the limestone? is it a harder layer, more resistant to wear? in some photos it looks like the ruts come up to a lower level of ground and several feet later, they start up again. as if the surface was harder and the wheels didn't cut into it. or are these just places where the limestone has been eroded away? by run-off water, perhaps? idk, just askin'.
Love the attention to detail!
Thanks!
Water management/hydroponic crop system.
Maybe it developed from cart tracks ,but was later used and developed as a means of communication,floating messages
They’re small compared to megaliths but they pose huge questions!!
I believe they are part of the substructure of something huge long gone. Washed away in cataclysm.
But how and why and who and when????
There have been suggestions that they were water channels. If you look at the ruts there are small oval shapes all over the area. They may have been where vegetables were grown such as cucumbers. This is the best I have heard out of all the different suggestions as to what they are. I can't remember the gentleman who suggested this explanation but I think he is very close to solving the mystery. He suggested that the small oval shaped areas would benefit from the soil being examined at the bottom of them to see if any traces of vegetables still exist.
There’s a paper on this but it only really works for certain areas where the ruts are parallel. It doesn’t work for all the ones that go down steep slopes with sharp curves and lots of crisscrossing. I’ve done quite a few videos on this, not just the one, reviewing the literature on it. It’s really quite mind boggling still.
I don't think I can come up with much to add beyond a focus on what laura already covered.
The parallelity (my hangover may have just made up that word) of the lines is significant. It serves some need. To house 2 wheels, or 2 whatevers. If it's 2 wheels then that assumes an axle. Once we get to that point, we've assumed a very great deal while not assuming much at all.
So if we discount the original idea of wheels- then what?
Are there any other vehicles that it could be for? Is there a type of vehicle that we haven't thought of?
If not vehicles and transport, then what? Barrys water channels is a good idea but what need does the parallel lines serve? Did they travel water in 2 directions? Hot and cold taps? If the water was being used, it was exposed and unprotected from contamination, weather patterns, pollution from plant matter, pests, diseases etc.
So if not travel, if not irrigation, then what? No matter how far fetched, literally what other possible options are there? Is the reason we can't get past transport/roads because we just can't see any other use?
I always stand by some vague thought I had once that went like this: not a new damn thing on the planet, people don't change.
What we do now is going to be pretty much what they did then, only in different colours.
Humans don't really have that many needs.
Food, water, shelter, transport and protection.
When the other options don't fit, transport seems the most likely.
Am I missing something. Are there other human needs the ruts could have met that we aren't thinking of? Herding cattle? Decorating their freaking space ships for their overlords?
Idk. I don't know and it drives me crazy. And don't say that's not a drive it's a short walk. I've heard it before.
It's so bizarre. I'm thinking they have to be Neolithic because that seems to be the most mysterious time on these islands.
If you look closely there are also boot imprints in the same soil where the people got in and out of their devices.
The deep tracks sugests wheels around 2meters? Big wheels can wobble some, and may vary tracks width? The tracks seem industrial, maybe 🤔 ancient cement?
Geological features I reckon. Limestone is known for producing geometric anomalies.
They ARE cart ruts. Why is that out of the question? That's what they are, carved for the purpose of moving carts. The carts themselves followed the highway construction crews who built the ruts for transportation, like a railroad, only in stone. That the ruts were purposefully carved is shown by the areas where traffic could be routed to a different 'track' without the driver having to pick up and move his heavily loaded cart to a branching track like on a rail junction and wait for the connection to wear through. The tracks were apparently all of a similar width and built to accommodate carts in other parts of the Mediterranean as well, such as Turkey. An 18" deep rut implies at least a 48" wheel to clear the center on the carts; the deeper the ruts, the bigger the wheels! They were solid lumber the better to wear, but they couldn't have made the tracks in the manner referred to by the pioneers in Wyoming whose wagons were iron shod and probably wore into the landscape much faster. Such tracks that appear in other areas of the Mediterranean may have had a similar purpose. There is also something else I noticed . And that is the appearance of these ruts coming like a comb down a hillside. What this suggests for me is a freeway of these tracks climbing or descending a hill. Why a freeway of activity here? Why indeed! Now imagine if this were a bare rock hillside with a number of carts all trying to climb or descend the hill without tracks to guide them. Add a rainstorm to the picture if you like. No these I believe were roads, but of a different kind than those we are used to in historic memory. By the way, the Romans apparently built many of these roads, but not clearly all, for use associated with the quarries.
So where do they lead? Any maps of these roads? Also a Pre-Punic date would be a logical inference if a Punic tomb interrupts a track. That seems easy. The Maltese civilization during the Neolithic was much larger and occupied the now flooded lowlands of the Malta plateau especially in the east as a logical explanation for all this activity on two or three small rocky islands. That they have to had occupied the area of the Malta Plateau can be assumed by the depth charts alone, but it is also backed up apparently with evidence on the sea floor. Occupation must have extended from the Paleolithic into the Neolithic in this whole dryland region. This whole area of the south Mediterranean was a continuous land mass extending from Sicily south into the Sicily Channel, taking in the area of Malta and connecting with Tunisia, where there may be some very interesting ruins now under the sea. That is why I'm not surprised to see an out of place supposedly monolith in the Sicily Channel. Also on virtually dry land during this time was the Aegean basin, perhaps pre-Cycladic inhabitants occupied this area as well, or the upper Adriatic. Certainly the Levant and other areas.
The problem I encounter with archaeologists, whether professional or amateur, is their inability to quit looking at the landscape and thinking it has always been this way. This, "it's always been this way," flawed thinking really messes up good scientific speculation.
Okay, looking at your drone view, you can clearly tell what these so called cart ruts are from. Notice the inconsistency of their spacing between each other. If they were cart ruts, the ruts would run parallel to each other with no expansion or contraction, these ruts do expand and contract.
At the far left, many ruts bunch up together, which means it's a rally point. The stone is too hard for carts to cut ruts into it, so we also know that on the day the ruts were made, the surface was malleable.
The trees present appear to be ceder; a highly prized wood in ancient times. In the Biblical record of both king David and Solomon, that the acquisition of ceder wood was a huge industry, with one nation completely dedicated to lumbering it.
Thus, Clapham Junction is an abandoned ancient logging camp. The hypogeum would have made a perfect expedient base camp or work camp. The ruts were made when the trees were drug away.
I got a bit o f life throw my way & am only just returning to clarify my question as to what function cart ruts may have filled.
I asked a question about them in regards to placement. Were they cut in following contours of the land, at angles to the flow of surface water? Were they ever cut more up & down, rather than side to side, in relation to the natural flow of surface water?
My thought is they were not use as a sewer or as part of an irrigation system, rather as down valley flash flood control.
In that role their function would be to slow down the flow while reducing the immediate build up of volume that leads to the more catastrophic impacts of flash flooding.
How would that work?
Esstenially by creating swailes, built up mounds planted with vegetation to increase the absorbency of the soil. They could have backfill those ruts with composted soil, seeded with rapid growing low spreading plants, & the rapid shedding of fresh rainwater would be slowed down enough to moderate the down valley flash flood damage.
In that case the porosity of the underlying limestone would be a boon. Looking at maps where cart ruts are found, compared to known flash flooding zones may be interesting.
Just a thought.
This is precisely what I am working up as a proposal for use in up valley water management to reduce the volume & speed of fresh rainwater as it accumulates to become catastrophic flash floods.
The math looks good too!
Thanks for all the work you do. I do enjoy taking journeys back in time.
There are some 'cart tracks' in the Jura mountains in France, again showing on hard limestone slabs protruding from and level with the cow fields. quite shallow of a few centimetres deep ruts and I only found two places where they were visible. As all instences are found in limestone which was likely silt in shallow water at one stage, it could be the tracks left behind by marine creature and the subsequent trackways once exposed were more easily erroded or in some cases made use of by human 'carts' at any point in human history, I am reluctant to agree to the invention of the wheel being only 5-6000 years old as anyone who has rolled a tree trunk anytime in the last 400,000 years could have made use of the rolling action for a simple wheel in which case this opens up that these trackways for use and may have erroded them deeply. I in my delusions could imagine self driving carts pulled by a trained donkey delivering goods backwards and forwards to various communitys over short distances with the wheels firmly kept on the right track by the cart ruts, clapham junction may just have been an overely complex experiment 🤣
Carvings on bones from the younger dryus on the Danube River have parallel lines all over as decorations. Perhaps there is a connection. There is speculation but no idea what they mean, representative of waterways maybe.
Hmm will have a look at that one. Thanks!
@@MegalithHunter I saw a recent video on a channel called Ancient Architects about the bone carvings. 2 months ago
I edited the post to the proper channel Ancient Architects
Age is simple - they go sometimes into the see / when was last see level uprise?
The dragging footmarks of surley teens asked to take out the middens bag?
Ancient Rugby training butts grooves. Are the Maltese Ruggers the team they once were ?
Oh for a real cronovisor. There are so many things that would be cleared up if we just understood what they were used for.
And if it WAS vehicles... pretty damn huge vehicles...
And if it WAS wheels... why the rigidity that the ruts would bring? Like... we just drive on flat roads. Why would they need steering (?) Via the ruts? What vehicles don't have steering?
What vehicles have wheels and power but not steering? And if they did have steering what would it be for since they'd be literally stuck in a rut?
Giant sleds with engines since there are no animal prints or worn centre grooves. Giant engine powered sleds are the only ridiculous vehicle I can think of that fits that scenario.
@@KerriEverlasting jeez, Kerri! can i get a word in edgewise😂 sssooo, now our carts have power? or sledges with engines? here, i'll add to this ridiculous vehicle. what mode of propulsion did this engine power? especially with a sledge? rocket or jet? propeller? woohoo! got me goin' now🤯
@@floydriebe4755 ikr. Hangovers don't do me any favours. This isn't to say they actually had engines/power etc - rather, when imagining a vehicle, there are logic gaps when we begin with certain assumptions.
Honestly at this point I don't even see how vehicles would even have been possible- and that's our best guess 😨😭😖
Laura, I didn’t hear you mention, and I’ve often wondered if the cart ruts were made in a softer strata, when it wasn’t as hard or was more like mud. I’m sure it has been postulated previously, but have no knowledge of it having been bebunked or proven not possible. It would I believe explain much and answer many questions. Your take on this theory??
Highly unlikely. The limestone the ruts are carved in was formed under the sea 22 million years ago. It’s been hard ever since it was above water.
I visited Clapham Junction about 10 years ago and I didn't question at the time that the "cart ruts" were man made but I was struck by the similarity of the geological map you showed with the patterns of the cart ruts and I started to wonder if they were actually natural ruts caused by running water and/or erosion. As I watched your vid I couldn't shake off the idea and now I'm curious as to why it is so certain they were man made?... might the term "cart ruts" be leading us away from unexplored paths of explanation?
There are no known geological processes that could form them, especially since they always have a similar gauge of 1.4 metres. But the frequency and randomness of them does draw the mind to that conclusion.
Look closely rock has blue tint to it
Transportation net work? How do u explain that some times they turn in to just one track? Also they way they are carved in a v shape or sometimes in a u pattern very prissily ? As if a machine made them and then the were laid down for some thing els to go in them. Some times they start out of nowhere like on top of a mountain in Peru and after 10 feet they stop? Also what ever was traveling on these made scratch marks on the side of the slopes? Just very strange just like all the other megaliths all over the world. I think there is a side to physics we arnt allowed to know about do to the the way things are set up by our owners who like dirty energi we pay them for, as if they own this planet? If we knew the side of physics they are hiding from us maybe some of this could start making sence.
Maybe it's carts mark in blue clay harden over thousands year must be hot there
Not clay. There are clay layers in Malta, however this is limestone.
Sre chisel marks evident? When was the island deforested?
No obvious tool marks. It was never forested but there was a lot more vegetation in the Early Neolithic.
It's a bit weird that no one knows how they were made!
It certainly is!
What about them being cut by a wheelbarrow?
Big wheelbarrow. Lol.
Congratulations for your channel! Do you know this reportage from BBC, that shows a not very known similar car routes in Terceira Island, Azores, with strong similarities with Malta car routes?
czcams.com/video/2bm5ivctdB4/video.html
Azores Islands were probabily ocupied before the portuguese discovery of the islands, who knows in pre-historic times by some civilizations that left the isaland later, just like in Malta!
Yes I’ve seen this one. Look identical!
MegalithHunter _in situ_! Finally -- give us more of it!
Ikr! On site is so good! 🔥
Thanks Mats! I will do some more in the field when I can manage.