Wood to iron to steel: The ancient history of the track

Humans have been using tracks, of one kind or another, for over 20,000 years. Travois, for instance, were used to drag heavy loads. These were two wooden poles used to form a sort of sledge, that could be loaded with heavy materials, and dragged by humans, or by dogs or horses.

- Vandana Dubey

The earliest travois tracks, found in New Mexico, date to 22,000 years ago, predating agriculture and settled living. For a largely migratory species, such transport would have been vital. By the time of Ancient Greece, track-based transport was getting rapid upgrades. But first...

The Sweet Track, England, 3800 BCE
Buried in the bogs of Somerset, England, is a network of wooden logs that was once used by Neolithic humans, to cut across this marshy ground.

Now called the Sweet Track, after Ray Sweet, who discovered it while working on an excavation project there in 1970, the tracks are believed to date to 3800 BCE. Local timber was used to create the layers of interlocked beams, which remained intact, over the millennia, because of the low oxygen levels in the bog.