"Cart Ruts": The Mystery of the Prehistoric "Railway of Stone" in Malta.

a reply to: Meldionne1

You hit a theory that I have had for a very long time....

In Malta still today weather conditions at sea can be very different depending what part of the island you are on, especially the south by Dingli where most of the cart ruts are found. The cliff face of the south of Malta makes it a nasty place to be during a storm and the Cart rut pictured in Birzebugia was actually used for boats in the early 1900s

For me it makes perfect sense to have a network system that can easily transport boats from sea to land and even traverse quite a bit of land to reach another bay which may be safer to make birth.

The only problem is such as 'Clapham Junction' where there are hundreds all intercrossing and fairly far away from the sea makes it an unlikely sole purpose.

Then again as another poster mentioned, all the cart ruts differ from each other some thin some wide and uneven to near perfect lines. There could have been several purposes to the ruts from Irragation to Boat transport and my personal yet unbelievable idea...... Automatic Railway system Where a having a simple animal such as a bull/ox would be attached to a cart on the grooves and would simply move from one 'station' to another and at each station the bull would stop to feed/drink from trofs and once the troffs finished the animal would continue on route to the next station and so forth.

I only came up with that idea as a child when following the cart ruts many and nearly all pass by very close to every temple site on the Island and ones such as Tarxien, Mnidra and Hagar Qim all had the 'banana shaped' stones which look like troffs placed at the side of the closest cart rut. Once again just a crazy idea I had as a kid but no closer to a reality as an adult lol