Cart-Ruts *

Published June 21, 2011

The Cart Ruts of Malta are one of the many remarkable archaeological features of the archipelago. Unfortunately, the local authorities have not done all they could to ensure their preservation. Cart ruts are also found in other countries but with nothing like the numbers found in Malta.

Sardinia has a number of comparable cart ruts that have only recently received the attention they deserve. Dr Dominique Görlitz has studied these cart ruts^(ai). Images of the Sardinian ruts can also be seen in a YouTube video^(aj).

Madeira taxi sleds

An article written in 1904^(h) describes a visit to the Madeiras where the writer travelled on a sled drawn by oxen, while Alexander Braghine describes how Paul le Cour visited the Azores and noted that the natives there used ‘sledges’ rather than wheeled vehicles and greased the runners to assist movement, similar to the practice on the Madeiras. A more recent paper^(s) by Félix Rodrigues of Azores University discusses in detail cart ruts found on Terceira Island in the Azores. Other papers^(w)(x) on the Academia.edu website discuss ‘ruts’ on Lanzarote in the Canaries.

Uwe Sneider has produced the most comprehensive overview of the geographical distribution of cart ruts that I have encountered^(ak). He has visited many of the sites in the Mediterranean and across Europe and has alluded to possible traces of ruts on other continents.

An image (4th down) from Malta on a 2017 posting^(af), appears to show where axles have worn into a raised stone wall at one side of a rut, which would seem to end the ‘sledge versus wheel’ controversy.

Another feature of the ruts found in Malta is the inexplicable manner in which some will suddenly disappear at cliff edges! Furthermore, ruts are also found disappearing into the sea on one side of a bay and then reappearing on the opposite side. Over a century ago Emanuel Magri reported that there were cart ruts on the tiny island of Filfla, which lies 5km off the south coast of mainland Malta, suggesting the disappearance of a very large tract of land between the two.

The melitamegalithic website has linked the altered orientation of Malta’s temples with the geological disruption indicated by the cart ruts ^(ae) noting that “While the geology of the Maltese islands indicates unmistakably major events of a cataclysmic nature, these give little hint as to what took place, and when. What is definitely obvious is that the geologic events are evident from man-made artefacts. Those artefacts point to the kind of event and the time when it occurred. In geological time they are quite recent.”

“The earliest reference to cart-ruts was made by Gian Francesco Abela (1582–1655) in 1647 ^[¹⁶⁷⁶^] who suggested that they were used to transport stones from quarries to the sea for exportation to Africa during the Arab rule in Malta.”^(z)

Dr David Trump (1931-2016) who has done much to advance Maltese archaeology, published a booklet on the cart-ruts in 2008 ^[658]. Trump nicknamed the complex collection of ruts at Misrah Ghar il-Kbir “Clapham Junction” after the London railway station, where several railway services interchange. A 1998 paper^(d) by Joseph Magro Conti and Paul C. Saliba focused on “Clapham Junction” and concluded that the ruts had a clear connection with the transportation of material from adjacent quarries.

Speaking of railways, Ralph Ellis has written on the suggestion that the standard British railway gauge may have had its origins in the cart ruts of Malta or ancient Egyptian cubits!^(ag)

A connection between the cart ruts and Atlantis has been suggested by Anton Mifsud and adopted by the late Axel Hausmann, who both claim that the ruts were the irrigation channels referred to by Plato (Critias 118c-e).

Another prominent archaeologist, Claudia Sagona, has also suggested^(f)(j) that the ruts were used for irrigation, although she has not associated them with Plato’s text. While this linkage fits nicely with the theory of Atlantis having been in the region of Malta, it does not stand up to close examination.

First of all the cart ruts follow the natural undulations of the Maltese landscape and so to function as irrigation channels would require water to flow uphill for parts of its journey, Trump has mentioned how some of the ruts can be seen sloping as much as 45°. Roman aqueducts, like the one in Malta’s Rabat^(ac)(ad), seldom used a gradient greater than half of one percent.

Secondly, the fact that the ruts are always found in pairs would suggest a degree of unnecessary and wasteful duplication found in no other irrigation system in the world. Because; if the ruts were intended to carry water, for the same labour they could have been cut as a single channel at twice the depth cutting losses through evaporation by half.

As well as that, the ground between each pair of tracks could provide an extra acre of arable land for every two miles of length. Furthermore, the multiplicity of tracks at the ‘Clapham Junction’ site is incompatible with an irrigation system.

All of which is compounded by the absence of controlling sluicegates anywhere at the remaining 100+ sites, and emphasised by Trump’s observation that “no association of ruts with water sources has been demonstrated.”^[870.268]

I refer below to several countries where comparable cart ruts have also been found. I am not aware of even one instance where any of these have been suggested as having an irrigation function.

Compounding all that is the fact that no supporter of the cart ruts as Plato’s irrigation channels has attempted to explain how the dimensions of the ruts can be measured in inches while Plato describes canals measured in feet – tens of feet!

Joseph S. Ellul in his book Malta’s Prediluvian Culture ^[^0289]expressed some controversial unconventional views^(t) regarding the cart-ruts, including his assertion that the ruts were created by tools or machinery and were formed during the Stone Age before the biblical Deluge! A chapter from his book focussed on the cart ruts has been translated^(ah) into German and published by Atlantisforschung. With the help of Google Translate, I have added an English text below (See: Archive 7256P).

Graham Hancock refers to the cart ruts several times in Underworld ^[274], where he commented that “It is certain, too, that they were not simply worn away in the tough limestone by the passage of cart-wheels over periods of centuries, as many have wrongly theorized; on the contrary, there is no proof whatsoever that cart-wheels ever ran in these ruts – which were initially carved out of the bedrock with the use of tools.” ^[p.331] His claim that the ruts were hand-carved is disputed and Gordon E. Weston in his excellent book ^[754.172] debunks the idea.

Philip Coppens wrote a paper on the ruts, offering an overview of the controversies relating to their use and date^(aa).

By way of comic relief, I thought I should include one theory regarding an explanation^(c) for the ruts from Laura Knight-Jadczyk, a noted conspiracy theorist, which I quote in full: “Do I have an idea to propose? Of course I do. I wouldn’t be writing about it if I didn’t. I would like to suggest that these “ruts” look an awful lot like places where lightning has struck, and the electricity has blasted away the dirt and rock as it shoots along some sort of natural earth power grid conductor. The only difference is that the cart ruts are not random. That suggests that there was something present in the ground laid out in a definite grid, which acted as a conductor. Were the cart ruts some sort of networked energy conduction system? Could some sort of element have been placed in the ground by an ancient civilization; something that conducted power to their homes the way our vulgar power poles and lines crisscross the landscape? And then, at some point in time, was the earth hit by such a surge of energy from some unknown source that these power “lines” melted the rock in which they were “strung?” Perhaps a surge of some kind of cosmic energy source? Maybe even the Electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear explosion? Maybe it was neither of these, but merely a massive overheating of the surface of the earth so that the conduction element and its insulating covering melted and was swept away?”

One of the more bizarre suggestions has been proposed by Markus Tutsch on the German EFODON website, that the parallel ruts were used in some way to distribute electrical power^(q)!!!

Another comical suggestion is offered by Dr Cornelius Niels Kopf who has proposed that “The Bronze Age traces on Malta and Gozo and many other parts of the then populated world, known as cart ruts, were sports facilities, and the area designated as ‘Clapham Junction’ was apparently the ‘stadium’ of Malta.” ^(r)

In 2010, the most comprehensive work on the ruts, that I’m aware of, was published by Gordon E. Weston^[754]. Weston now has a website^(g) where he discusses the ‘ruts’ further and provides additional links. Weston also published Clapham Junction: 3000 Years of Maltese Heritage, in 2015 ^[¹⁶¹⁹^].

There are also several websites devoted to the investigation of these enigmatic features^(a). One of them^(m) offers a fine collection of images, including the one above, as well as a discussion on the origin, use, and questions raised by the Maltese cart ruts.

A study of the ruts by three geomorphologists at Portsmouth University, published in Antiquity, is a valuable addition to the literature on the subject^(b). The authors “that the ruts could be caused by two-wheeled carts with a gauge of 1.40m carrying moderate loads. In wet weather the carts would gradually cut into the limestone and reach their ground clearance of 0.675m, causing the carriers to try another route – so there are plenty of them.”

Uwe Topper has written an extensive paper on cart ruts around the Mediterranean and beyond⁽ⁱ⁾. He controversially theorised that the ruts were created when the limestone on which they were cut was ‘softer’!!!

A short April 2015 video clip^(l) demonstrates how even a 20kg quarter-scale slide-car, can with one pass cut a 1mm groove into the soft Maltese limestone, near Sliema. A full-scale slide-car would be carrying 320 Kg.

Amateur archaeologists, Ronnie Gallagher and Abbas Islamov have highlighted the existence of cart-ruts in the Gobustan peninsula of Azerbaijan ^(e).

In a 2014 article^(k)(ak) on the Mysteria 3000 website, André Kramer drew attention to the cart-ruts discovered on Mallorca, the principal island of the Balearic archipelago.

Evidence exists for cart ruts in other countries in Europe, such as Switzerland, and much further afield including South America^(u). The same site makes two interesting points, (1) since the earliest carts probably lacked brakes, the repeated use of the ruts gave some small degree of control, and (2) without any obvious passing points the ruts seem to indicate that they were limited to one-way traffic.

In 2015, Russian geologist Alexander Koltypin drew much media attention^(o) when he claimed that comparable tracks in the Phrygian Valley of Turkey were dated to 14 million years ago and were created by an unknown civilisation. He also implied that the cart ruts of Malta had a similar origin! However, a quick look at his website^(p) revealed him to have travelled well beyond the lunatic fringe.

I find it interesting that much more investigation of the Maltese cart ruts has been carried out by foreigners than by natives of the islands. A recent example is the inventory of ruts recently published by Monika I. Trinkler, a Swiss photographer, who has listed 717 pairs on Malta and 43 on Gozo Dec. 2020). Her interest in the Maltese ruts has now expanded into the identification of ruts throughout Central Europe^(v).

Unfortunately, the date and function of the ruts are still sources of intense debate, particularly in Malta itself. In 2017, Anthony Bonanno published The Archaeology of Malta and Gozo ^[¹⁶⁶⁵^] in which he argued for a Roman rather than a prehistoric date for the cart ruts. This runs counter to the opinion of many, particularly that of the late David Trump. In 2019, Anton Mifsud published a rebuttal of Bonanno’s claims in a fully illustrated book entitled David’s Ruts ^[^1666], published as a tribute to the work carried out by David Trump on Malta.

In August 2021, it was announced that some of Malta’s cart ruts were to be covered by a new airport roundabout^(ab)! A comment is unnecessary.

^(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20190102032648/https://cartruts.com/

^(b)(PDF) THE CART RUTS OF MALTA: AN APPLIED GEOMORPHOLOGY APPROACH THE CART RUTS OF MALTA: AN APPLIED GEOMORPHOLOGY APPROACH (researchgate.net)

^(c)https://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/adventures247.htm

^(d)https://www.angelfire.com/ar/magrosalibarchaeo/

^(e) https://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai103_folder/103_articles/103_cart_ruts.html

^(f) Oxford Journal of Archaeology (Vol.23, Issue 1, p.45-60)

^(g)https://cartrutanswers.com/index.html (offline 15/07/14)

^(h)See: https://web.archive.org/web/20110616093830/https://www.oldandsold.com/articles09/travel-45.shtml

⁽ⁱ⁾http://www.ilya.it/chrono/pages/gleisedt.htm (german)

^(j) https://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/000350.html

^(k) Cart-Ruts auf Mallorca – Mysteria3000 (archive.org)