Sometimes we go in search of something for curiosity’s sake. This was the case with “The Cart Ruts.” We had heard they were important to see and nearby but hard to find. Ah, a quest!
After an hour of walking, a wrong turn onto a busy urban highway, and along a dirt road where huge cement trucks were passing while we choked on the dust, there they were.
What, you may ask, am I looking at?
You are looking at the Naxxar Gap Cart Ruts curving down the Great Fault Escarpment in sweeping curves. These are ancient and mysterious paired grooves in the rock found in Malta and at other sites in Europe. The deep ruts, rilles, tracks, grooves, or channels were left in Malta’s limestone but in such numbers, variety and confusion that they leave more questions than answers.
If they were created and used by some form of vehicle then how did they move along some of these tracks when the pairs of ruts are nearly a meter deep?
Why do the Cart Ruts on the islands of Malta and Gozo lead straight off high cliffs and isolated headlands?
Why do some extend into the sea?
Who made the ruts? Was it the Maltese Temple Builders, Romans, Phoenicians, Malta’s Bronze Age people or other original Maltese peoples?
They could be glacial grooves in the limestone. Perhaps the grooves filled up with packed mud every spring creating a smooth and solid surface on which classic wheeled carts could pass. Perhaps it was a large-scale irrigation system.
There is no definitive answer. What do you think?
MedFlies 