Video on evidence for ancient American horses

Researching available solid evidence for horses in ancient America has been a pursuit of Daniel's for quite a while now. Not surprisingly, other interested parties with greater resources have been doing it as well. In addition to the information he has shared about the findings published in scientific journals, there have been solid findings coming from recent digs in San Luis Potosí, Mexico showing the survival of post-Pleistocene ancient horses. Published in the Texas Journal of Science, these finds can now be taken seriously. These and other data points are discussed in this video with Kirk Magleby of the Ancient America Foundation.

Since its initial publication in 1830, the Book of Mormon's mention of horses has been a seemingly anachronistic target for easy criticism. At that time, the prevailing scientific knowledge was that there were no horses in the Americas until they were brought by European conquerors. Eventually, remains of ancient horses such as the Mexican Horse, Western Horse, Yukon Horse, Scott's Horse, and others were found, different from the modern horse (Equus Caballus) in various ways. That is common knowledge now, along with the belief that they all died out by the end of the Pleistocene epoch, some 11,700 years BP (before present) or about 10,000 BC.

Horse remains have been found in digs since the late 1800s, but because some of these extinct types are very similar to the modern horse, they were often misidentified. They are commonly known today and at times found in stratigraphic layers that would suggest they survived until much more recently. The real question is, how long? That is still an open debate, but enough reliable data now exists to say that the survival of some ancient American horses into the Holocene (our current) epoch, should not even be controversial.

On a related note, Yvette Running Horse Collin, as the dissertation for her PhD in Indigenous Studies at the University of Alaska, wrote a paper countering what she calls a 'Eurocentric myth.' Her research attests that Native American peoples have a long-standing cultural relationship with the horse, one that predates the European conquest of the Western Hemisphere. 

Of course, none of this proves the Book of Mormon to be true, nor does it explain the extent of their use among the Nephites, Lamanites, or other Book of Mormon peoples. Based on the record itself, horses are not mentioned after about 26 AD, so they may have died or been killed off by then. For some reason, there still appears to be considerable resistance to the suggestion that horses lived in the Americas much longer than previously thought or that perhaps, in some isolated cases, they never disappeared at all. We suggest, rather than getting sidetracked on other issues, the serious enquirer consider the points raised here.

Click here to watch the video.

Click here to read about post-Pleistocene horses from San Luis Potosí, published in the Texas Journal of Science.

Click here to read Dr. Collin's PhD dissertation, published by the University of Alaska Fairbanks.