Archive 6308

Cart Ruts in Malta[edit]

Cornelius Niels Kopf

The Cart Ruts of the Maltese – not mysterious anymore There is a new and the first logical explanation for this many times discussed phenomenon: The cart ruts in Malta and on other parts of the settled world back then were sport sites and the so called “Clapham Junction”-space was the National Stadium of Malta. During competitions in this area, equal weights were pulled or pushed to a finish line on cart ruts, that were carved into rocky grounds and those ruts were sometimes changed, improved or completely renewed before a race. The weights were placed on presumably uniaxial equal carts with skids, rolls or wheels underneath. As the people of this time did not have stopwatches the whole competition had to happen at once on equally long cart routes and that explains why those curious Cart Ruts do not end at one point but run next to each other and finish wherever the competitors wanted the race to end. Another fact which offers confirmation of this theory is that next to the tracks no hoof marks from any draft animal can be found – they were only used barefoot or with light shoes by the human competitors. The inhabitants of Malta had ships and they needed strong and muscular fellow countryman who could fight in the coastal areas and fend off attacks. Presumably they would choose their leaders based on their physical conditions and their strength. There was no better way to evaluate this than sport competitions, most likely embellished with religious rituals, where men could defeat in front of an audience the opponents without hurting them, because obviously they were not enemies. In order to practice the Maltese created private training grounds and this is the reason where in some areas of Malta, Gozo, amongst others, only one or two tracks can be found next to each other. Presumably local pre-selections took place before the best people were sent to “Clapham Junction”. It is assumed that these kinds of competitions also happened at areas with a softer ground that weathered rapidly, but these routes not preserved any longer and probably proved to be a failure. Regardless if or not this slides or carts had one or two axles, the problem was for a long time that they had no dirigible or controllable axles. Hence the furrows we can see today were carved into the rocky ground so that the wheels or skids would stay on their track during the race. After the invention of steerable axles those rock rails were logically useless and even disruptive as the wheels were scratching the rails and slowed down the movement and destroyed the tracks at the same time. Consequently, those sport sites stopped being used from at least the Iron Age, as one can see at the plateau of “Clapham Junction”: Cave dwellings and gravesites were built and made the Routes unserviceable. nielskopf@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.125.249.46 (talk) 12:40, 10 September 2017 (UTC)