Europe

A new survey of Malta’s famous Maltese cart ruts argues that most were made during the Classical era rather than deep prehistory, bringing the long-running debate closer to the Roman world. The study by University of Malta archaeologist Joel Grima, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, catalogued 2,628 tracks across Malta and Gozo and found no secure evidence that any pair is prehistoric. That is a substantial shift in the chronology of one of the Mediterranean’s most puzzling landscapes. The conclusion does not make every groove Roman, nor does it solve every question about how the tracks formed. It does, however, challenge the assumption that weathered limestone and tracks disappearing beneath the sea must point to the Neolithic