International audience In 1861, Henri Duveyrier learned from Toubous the existence of ruts in the ground which could have been made by carts harnessed to zebus, in the south west of present day Libya. This hypothesis was made more credible by the presence of engravings depicting similar harnesses on nearby rocks. Using this information – but without actually visiting the site – and inspired not only by Herodotus’ Vth century B.C. texts which stated that the Garamantes present in the area did indeed possess carts, but also by the fact that three military expeditions were conducted by the Romans in that same area at the beginning of the Christian era described by Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy, Duveyrier considered that in Antique times zebu drawn vehicles could have gone from the Libyan coast to the Aïr region via Garama, up until the time when dromedaries were introduced as pack animals in the IIIrd-IVth centuries A.D., replacing those carts. Using ox-drawn vehicles for trans-Saharan transport and trade implies that roads had to be constructed. This is the first time this hypothesis had been put forward. Duveyrier believed that the builders of these roadways were the ancestors of the black cultivators of Saharan oases, including the Garamantes. This idea is based on the ingenuity he attributes to these dark-skinned populations, whom he also considers to be at the origin of foggaras and other hydraulic constructions, as well as preroman buildings and monumental tombs also to be found in the area. His bias towards cartage, and its corresponding road network, and, correlatively, his refusal to consider the use of pack animals such as equidae and bovidae however much better suited to dry environments, may be explained by the geopolitical outlook of the Second Empire, with its desire to open up its Algerian colony to the Sudanese world, and surreptitiously influencing Duveyrier’s logic and line of thought.