Exciting article about by PhD Steven Jones re: more recent surviving native horse in North America
Here is a paper on the subject which I wrote which may be of interest; published (June 2012) in the latest issue of Ancient American. I hope it is helpful.
Were there Horses in the Americas before Columbus?
This letter is in response to a request from Wayne May for information regarding my research on early horses (Equus) in the Americas, before the arrival of Columbus. This interim material is shared in order to encourage a wider community to join in the task of gathering further evidence regarding pre-Columbian horses in the Americas, including a request for photos of pictographs, petroglyphs and engravings which may represent pre-Columbian horses.
About twelve years ago, I began a project to seek horse bones from sites in North America and Mesoamerica for the purpose of radiocarbon dating. In this research, I was joined by Prof. Wade Miller of the BYU Department of Geology, archaeologists Joaquin Arroyo-Cabrales and Shelby Saberon, and Patricia M. Fazio of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. My special thanks to FARMS and ISPART who funded much of the project in years past. We secured horse bones for dating, some directly from the field. Then state-of-the-art radiocarbon dating was performed at Stafford Laboratories in Colorado, the University of California at Riverside, or Beta Analytic in Miami, Florida, employing Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (AMS) dating methods. The reliability of the AMS method of radiocarbon dating of bones is delineated in: Radiocarbon, Volume 34, Number 3, pp. 279-291.
The goal was to provide radiocarbon dates for samples that appeared from depth or other considerations to be pre-Columbian. The time frame of interest can be expressed in terms of “Before Present” by convention and extends from 10,000 BP (thus after the last ice age) to 500 BP (when Spaniards soon after Columbus brought horses to America). The prevailing paradigm holds that there were no horses in the Americas during this time interval; the Book of Mormon and a number of native American oral traditions hold otherwise. The samples in this study can be divided into two categories according to their origins: Mexico, and the United States.
Forty-five Equus samples were obtained in Mexico. Based on AMS dating, there was one sample from the Ice Age period, and six from the post-Columbus period. Other samples had insufficient collagen in the bone to permit dating – collagen protein locks in carbon-14, permitting accurate C-14 dating. Thus, the laboratories require a certain minimum amount of collagen in order to proceed with the dating. There were no Equus samples found in this study in Mesoamerica for the time interval 14,700 BC to 1650 AD.
By contrast, in North America, there are found Equus samples which do indeed appear in the time frame between the last ice age and the arrival of Columbus. The first of these was found in Pratt Cave near El Paso, Texas, by Prof. Ernest Lundelius of Texas A&M University. Prof. Lundelius responded to my inquiries and provided a horse bone from Pratt Cave which dated to BC 6020 – 5890. This date is well since the last ice age, into the time frame when all American horses should have been absent according to the prevailing paradigm.
Another Equus specimen was identified by Elaine Anderson, an expert on Equus identification, at Wolf Spider cave, Colorado. It dated to AD 1260 – 1400, again clearly before Columbus. Note that horses arrived on the new-world mainland with Cortes in 1519 AD [Henry, Marguerite and Wesley Dennis. All About Horses. Random House, 1962.]
Dr. Patricia Fazio of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, has joined our network of researchers in this field. Dr. Fazio (private communication) alerted us to a horse bone found at Horsethief Cave in Wyoming which dates to approximately 3,124 BP, i.e., 1100 BC, using thermoluminescent methods. We attempted to have this bone re-dated using the AMS methods which are more accurate, but there proved to be insufficient collagen in the bone to permit AMS dating. The 1100 BC date (although approximate) still stands.
Dr. Fazio also pointed to a publication, The Wyoming Archaeologist 38: 55-68, where results of a horse bone found in Wyoming were dated to 1426 – 1481 AD (one sigma calibrated dates) using AMS methods, well before Columbus. The authors express difficulty in explaining this early date:
“These radiocarbon dates place the horse skeleton at a very early age for modern horses to have been in Wyoming.”
A paper by Dr. R. Alison notes evidence for horses in Canada dating 900 and 2900 years ago; also in the period of interest:
However, the compete extirpation of ancestral horse stock in Canada has yet to be completely confirmed and a bone found near Sutherland, Saskatchewan, at the Riddell archaeological site suggests some horses might have survived much later. The bone (Canadian Museum of Nature I-8581), has been tentatively dated at about 2900 years ago. Another Equus sp. Bone, found at Hemlock Park Farm, Frontenac County, Ontario, dates to about 900 years ago. Exhaustive confirmation of both bones has yet to be completed, but if they prove to be authentic, they comprise evidence that horses survived in Canada into comparatively modern times.
Thus, there are a half dozen dated Equus samples that date in the time frame 6,000 BC to 1481 AD, well since the last ice age and all before Columbus. Note that all of these radiometrically-dated Equus remains were found in North America.
In addition to this hard physical evidence, a number of researchers are looking seriously into oral histories of native Americans which point rather clearly to the existence of horses before the Spanish arrived. In particular, we note that research results have been published by Yuri Kuckinsky [http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku/tran/thor.htm ] and Claire Henderson [http://printfu.org/horses+north+dakota or http://printfu.org/read/the-aboriginal- … uT5MzLkq3m ]. For example, the Appaloosa horse appears to have been in North America before the Spanish brought European horses.
A January 2012 publication describes progress in DNA analyses of horses which promises to open new avenues for this research:
“In recent years, many scholars have embraced the hypothesis that the Botai or other inhabitants of the Eurasian Steppes became the first people to tame the wild horse, Equus ferus, between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago. This theory implies that horses were domesticated in a similar manner to other modern livestock, such as cattle, sheep and goats, said Alessandro Achilli, a geneticist at the University of Pavia in Italy. DNA analyses have revealed little genetic variation among these animals, suggesting that they descended from a small group of ancestors tamed in just a few places, he explained.
In particular, the Equus samples that have been identified in North America, anomalous because they date to the “excluded” period between 6,000 BC and 1490 AD, can now be analyzed to determine whether or not the DNA corresponds to domesticated Spanish horses brought over by the Conquistadores. My prediction is that the DNA will not so correspond.
In conclusion, using state-of-the-art dating methods, we along with other researchers have found radiometrically-dated evidence for the existence of horses in North America long after the last ice age and before the arrival of Columbus. These data challenging the existing paradigm. Further DNA analyses will provide additional data and insights.
Background of Professor Steven E. Jones: