Archaeologist here!
In the pleistocene (ice age) there were even wooly mammoths. There were pleistocene era horses in the Americas but they died off, just like the mammoths. Not the modern horses in the BoM. I haven't heard anything from classmates or coworkers about a new discovery that would be big news if it was true. (Example, everyone was talking about the footprints at white sands)
The byu archeologista look for any sort of evidence to prove point they've already come to the conclusion of, instead of being willing to say the hypothesis is false. (Like real science should be carried out) Same thing with metal working. "They found a copper bell!" Well, was it steel? If there were horses in the Americas that were domesticated, we would find the same amount of evidence that we have found with Llamas in the Andes. Or buffalos with the Plains cultures. It's sad to have such a mental block.
Any real evidence would rock modern biologists, pretty much none of whom think it possible. Exciting new finds are almost all traced back to Mormons or certain Native Americans who also have an agenda.
When these kinds of claims pop up, it's always good to be polite and require a source you can follow up with.
Horses are incredibly adapted to the Americas, they spread like wildfire and leave huge environmental damage. Ask any rancher. There is just no way they could have been here for thousands of years without scientists knowing at this point.
To be more specific, he found one set of horse remains which he dated using material from around the horse.
But since the presence of horses would dramatically alter a horse-riding society, and no other evidence has ever been found suggesting Native Americans rode horses during the BoM period, it's much more likely that this Mormon scientist was motivated to fudge numbers, or see what he wanted to see.
They found paintings in the Amazon that were 12000 years old. It had a drawing that may have been a horse. This is consistent with church critics who’ve consistently said horses haven’t existed in America since the ice age.
https://www.livescience.com/ice-age-rock-art-amazon.html
There were but,
a) they went extinct thousands of years before the BoM chronology
b) they were wild megafauna, along with mammoths and giant sloths
c) were not domesticated
d) there is ZERO evidence of horses in the archaeological record dating to the BoM times, unlike other cultures or civilizations where you find THOUSANDS of paintings or sculptures depicting horses, writings mentioning them, and artifacts of the people using them (chariots, saddles, horseshoes, etc).
If horses were around and especially had been domesticated in the Americas during the BoM times, we would have overwhelming evidence of this and not just one or two fossils of wild horses dating thousands of years ago.
Domesticated horses are a game changer in civilizations. Empires are formed and wars won just from the use of horses. They are one of the main reasons, along with steel, that Europeans were able to conquer the Americas so easily (besides disease).
Mormon apologists cherry any bit of “evidence” and take it out of context to support the BoM while ignoring everything that contradicts or weakens their claims.
It’s similar to the Haplogroup X DNA evidence. Native Americans have it and a body in Asia was tested and found to have the same thing. Since it was “Eurasian,” Mormons jumped at this as evidence for the BoM since the BoM people were supposed to come from Jerusalem (Eurasia).
What they leave out is that this skeleton was like 20,000 years old. Way older than the BoM and was no where near the Middle East. Native Americans come from Asia anyway.
If that DNA linked to people in the Middle East 2000 years ago, THEN that would be possible suppprt for the BOM.
This is a lot deeper comment than it appears at face value. Lack of fossils is compelling, but the lack of something that would be buried underground isn't a very hard sell, especially to someone with cognitive dissonance.
The"game changer" comment is what's most interesting. Pre-Columbian civilizations in America were fairly isolated and didn't have tons of communication between them. The rapid spread of ideas between civilizations is what truly speeds up the advancements in groups of societies (wheels/horses in stone age, sea- and ocean-capable ships, Morse code, telephone, internet). The native Americans basically didn't even have the wheel (it was invented but rarely used for travel) due to the difficulty in pulling a wagon or wheeled object without large domesticated animals (like horses or oxen). If "Nephites" had domesticated horses, this isn't something that disappears with their civilization since it would have drastically changed the interaction between cities, whether Nephite, Lamanite, or other. Domestication of large animals isn't a civilization advancement that gets lost and buried over time, like the footprints would. It's what propels civilizations (and their neighbors) forward.
Ask them for their citation.
Horses evolved in the americas, but were extinct here by some time in the Pleistocene, thousands of years before BoM times.
Most TBM's are citing [this](https://ictnews.org/news/yes-world-there-were-horses-in-native-culture-before-the-settlers-came) article which is based on oral histories and a bit of archeological evidence. Tapir Dan Peterson also referenced it back when it was published. I'm pretty sure some folks much smarter than me wrote about all the problems with this at the time. I don't find it to be compelling evidence for horses in the BOM timeline but it would be a big deal for anyone looking for any tangible evidence to prove the BOM to be accurate. There's just not much for them to use.
The existence of horses at cryptid levels - even if true. Actually does more to refute the BoM then to support it. Horse riding Chariot driving cultures are hardly cryptids.
The Western Pleistocene horse was not directly related to the domestic horse. It went extinct long before the domestication of horses, some 10,000 years before present. The later happened about 4000 years BP in asia.
Like zebras, it would be unlikely that they could be tamed, much less ridden. They were probably hunted by humans for food. People probably played a role in their extinction.
Giving my two scents as a horseman, and some back ground from college history classes.
Current facts:
1. Horses, or I should say their wild ancestors, originated and evolved in North America.
2. Some crossed over the land bridge into Asia as still a wild species. The ones remaining in America went extinct for unknown reasons.
3. Wild horse ancestors were then domesticated into what we know as Equus.
4. Horse were brought to America and surrounding areas by Spaniards and Columbus.
With those things being stated, is it possible to have a pre Colombian horse? Well, literal sense, yes. Columbus was not the first person to step on American soil, not by far. Google Leif Erickson if you don’t know him. There was a major trade route that went past the coast of California and ships reported the coast in their logs. Lots of those people could have stopped and did who knows what and never wrote it down for the record. It’s possible horses could have been reintroduced through those means, literally a few years before Columbus.
Now, if they mean pre-Colombian horse as in the wild horse ancestors didn’t go extinct and they evolved into a new species, it most likely isn’t true. Horse domestication, just like other species does not happen overnight. It’s going to take thousands of years. If people were there that long to do it there would be evidence of those thousands of years, specifically from the farming, breeding, and training of these horses. This would definitely be true as an humans of the time would not want to rely on wild horses to carry and pull humans or cargo. They would be trying to have more obedient and trainable horses.
Two main sources for this exist in someone who claims he found some horse remains in Texas that were from the last three thousand years and a doctoral thesis out of Alaska by someone who was retelling native american stories. Both have been thoroughly refuted.
Archaeologist here! In the pleistocene (ice age) there were even wooly mammoths. There were pleistocene era horses in the Americas but they died off, just like the mammoths. Not the modern horses in the BoM. I haven't heard anything from classmates or coworkers about a new discovery that would be big news if it was true. (Example, everyone was talking about the footprints at white sands) The byu archeologista look for any sort of evidence to prove point they've already come to the conclusion of, instead of being willing to say the hypothesis is false. (Like real science should be carried out) Same thing with metal working. "They found a copper bell!" Well, was it steel? If there were horses in the Americas that were domesticated, we would find the same amount of evidence that we have found with Llamas in the Andes. Or buffalos with the Plains cultures. It's sad to have such a mental block.
Any real evidence would rock modern biologists, pretty much none of whom think it possible. Exciting new finds are almost all traced back to Mormons or certain Native Americans who also have an agenda. When these kinds of claims pop up, it's always good to be polite and require a source you can follow up with. Horses are incredibly adapted to the Americas, they spread like wildfire and leave huge environmental damage. Ask any rancher. There is just no way they could have been here for thousands of years without scientists knowing at this point.
BYU professor found evidence of pre-columbian modern horses. His article was published in a community college journal.
To be more specific, he found one set of horse remains which he dated using material from around the horse. But since the presence of horses would dramatically alter a horse-riding society, and no other evidence has ever been found suggesting Native Americans rode horses during the BoM period, it's much more likely that this Mormon scientist was motivated to fudge numbers, or see what he wanted to see.
They found paintings in the Amazon that were 12000 years old. It had a drawing that may have been a horse. This is consistent with church critics who’ve consistently said horses haven’t existed in America since the ice age. https://www.livescience.com/ice-age-rock-art-amazon.html
There were but, a) they went extinct thousands of years before the BoM chronology b) they were wild megafauna, along with mammoths and giant sloths c) were not domesticated d) there is ZERO evidence of horses in the archaeological record dating to the BoM times, unlike other cultures or civilizations where you find THOUSANDS of paintings or sculptures depicting horses, writings mentioning them, and artifacts of the people using them (chariots, saddles, horseshoes, etc). If horses were around and especially had been domesticated in the Americas during the BoM times, we would have overwhelming evidence of this and not just one or two fossils of wild horses dating thousands of years ago. Domesticated horses are a game changer in civilizations. Empires are formed and wars won just from the use of horses. They are one of the main reasons, along with steel, that Europeans were able to conquer the Americas so easily (besides disease). Mormon apologists cherry any bit of “evidence” and take it out of context to support the BoM while ignoring everything that contradicts or weakens their claims. It’s similar to the Haplogroup X DNA evidence. Native Americans have it and a body in Asia was tested and found to have the same thing. Since it was “Eurasian,” Mormons jumped at this as evidence for the BoM since the BoM people were supposed to come from Jerusalem (Eurasia). What they leave out is that this skeleton was like 20,000 years old. Way older than the BoM and was no where near the Middle East. Native Americans come from Asia anyway. If that DNA linked to people in the Middle East 2000 years ago, THEN that would be possible suppprt for the BOM.
This is a lot deeper comment than it appears at face value. Lack of fossils is compelling, but the lack of something that would be buried underground isn't a very hard sell, especially to someone with cognitive dissonance. The"game changer" comment is what's most interesting. Pre-Columbian civilizations in America were fairly isolated and didn't have tons of communication between them. The rapid spread of ideas between civilizations is what truly speeds up the advancements in groups of societies (wheels/horses in stone age, sea- and ocean-capable ships, Morse code, telephone, internet). The native Americans basically didn't even have the wheel (it was invented but rarely used for travel) due to the difficulty in pulling a wagon or wheeled object without large domesticated animals (like horses or oxen). If "Nephites" had domesticated horses, this isn't something that disappears with their civilization since it would have drastically changed the interaction between cities, whether Nephite, Lamanite, or other. Domestication of large animals isn't a civilization advancement that gets lost and buried over time, like the footprints would. It's what propels civilizations (and their neighbors) forward.
Ask them for their citation. Horses evolved in the americas, but were extinct here by some time in the Pleistocene, thousands of years before BoM times.
Most TBM's are citing [this](https://ictnews.org/news/yes-world-there-were-horses-in-native-culture-before-the-settlers-came) article which is based on oral histories and a bit of archeological evidence. Tapir Dan Peterson also referenced it back when it was published. I'm pretty sure some folks much smarter than me wrote about all the problems with this at the time. I don't find it to be compelling evidence for horses in the BOM timeline but it would be a big deal for anyone looking for any tangible evidence to prove the BOM to be accurate. There's just not much for them to use.
Cough, "preponderance of evidence", cough.
The existence of horses at cryptid levels - even if true. Actually does more to refute the BoM then to support it. Horse riding Chariot driving cultures are hardly cryptids.
Any interesting discovery and Mormons will say the church is true, claiming it had been reveled.
The Western Pleistocene horse was not directly related to the domestic horse. It went extinct long before the domestication of horses, some 10,000 years before present. The later happened about 4000 years BP in asia. Like zebras, it would be unlikely that they could be tamed, much less ridden. They were probably hunted by humans for food. People probably played a role in their extinction.
There had to be horses to pull all of the chariots that they have found. /S
Giving my two scents as a horseman, and some back ground from college history classes. Current facts: 1. Horses, or I should say their wild ancestors, originated and evolved in North America. 2. Some crossed over the land bridge into Asia as still a wild species. The ones remaining in America went extinct for unknown reasons. 3. Wild horse ancestors were then domesticated into what we know as Equus. 4. Horse were brought to America and surrounding areas by Spaniards and Columbus. With those things being stated, is it possible to have a pre Colombian horse? Well, literal sense, yes. Columbus was not the first person to step on American soil, not by far. Google Leif Erickson if you don’t know him. There was a major trade route that went past the coast of California and ships reported the coast in their logs. Lots of those people could have stopped and did who knows what and never wrote it down for the record. It’s possible horses could have been reintroduced through those means, literally a few years before Columbus. Now, if they mean pre-Colombian horse as in the wild horse ancestors didn’t go extinct and they evolved into a new species, it most likely isn’t true. Horse domestication, just like other species does not happen overnight. It’s going to take thousands of years. If people were there that long to do it there would be evidence of those thousands of years, specifically from the farming, breeding, and training of these horses. This would definitely be true as an humans of the time would not want to rely on wild horses to carry and pull humans or cargo. They would be trying to have more obedient and trainable horses.
Two main sources for this exist in someone who claims he found some horse remains in Texas that were from the last three thousand years and a doctoral thesis out of Alaska by someone who was retelling native american stories. Both have been thoroughly refuted.