5 lane cart ruts

Post by **MWP admin** » Mon Oct 24, 2011 3:06 pm

Hi, I was at Qala, Gozo and I have observed something unusual.

There were some cart ruts, which at first I neglected, until I realised that they were not the usual 2 parallel rows but instead there were 5 (FIVE!) of them, all parallel .

Further more, these cart ruts had an ending, unlike other which do not seem to start or terminate anywhere. Are they something else that I am not aware of.

To add more, there were 2 sets of such 5-row cart-ruts. Each had a width of about 40cm, and were quite deep, though the soil and shubs inside made an estimation difficult.

Would be interesting to know if you have ever seen something similar, and if there is already an explanation / hypothesis about them.

Sigra · Post by **Sigra** » Tue Oct 25, 2011 4:09 pm

Wow, this is worth to be reported to “Heritage Malta”!

I’ve never seen or heard of five of them, all parallel. But that doesn’t mean anything; I’m not an expert.
In the booklet “Cart-Ruts”, by David Trump there are mentioned:
three rut groups
duplicated tracks
ruts forming a fork
multiple groups
pairs of ruts
but I didn’t find any mentioning of five parallel ruts.

I’ve no idea of an explanation/hypothesis about them, but I can join in with a few pictures of the ruts, discovered 2009 (or 2008?) near Mgarr (Malta). One of them seems, with ca. 70cm, to be the deepest rut ever fund.

Sigra

Post by **MWP admin** » Tue Oct 25, 2011 8:51 pm

Yours is also very interesting - I think those of Clapham Junction are 60cm deepest! Did you find these ruts you posted? Well done fil-kas!

It also seems that there are more ruts around the perimeter of the displaced rock as if the ruts had a connection with the digging/rock removal. Very mysterious