Are Wild Horses Native to the Americas – Part IV

-->Continuing from the previous post regarding the horse in the Americas and how it was claimed to have been extinct during Jaredite and Nephite times, and also a discussion here of the fascinating breed called the Curly Horse found in both North and South America.

Curly Horses of both North and South America, genetically connected to the ancient Equus of North America

In fact, mustangs from the curly horses in the Pryor Mountains are believed to have been here since at least the late 1600s, and most of the animals have only five lumbar vertebrae (common in primitive horses), and many often have a curly winter coat (Fran Lynghaug, The Official Horse Breeds Standards Guide). The presence of only five lumbar vertebrae is also found in the American Curly Horse, a breed well known to the Lakota and other tribes at least as early as 1800. Curlies were made famous by the Damele family in Nevada, who first saw Curlies running with wild mustangs in Nevada around 1900. When they discovered that the Curlies were especially well adapted to surviving very cold winters that killed other horses, the family started raising the Curlies as ranch horses, and still breed them today. Curly Horses were seen running wild in southern Alberta as recently as 50 years ago, and can still be seen in wild herds of the American west. Wildlife photographer Barbara Wheeler has photographed many Curly Horses in the wild in Nevada and Wyoming.
    In fact, according to Dale Wooley, author of The Dameles and the American Curly Horse, “When the Dameles first began catching Curly horses out of the Mustang herds, they were big, coarse-looking horses with non-refined heads, bodies, and legs.”
    The point is, curly horses were seen running wild in southern Alberta as recently as 50 years ago, and can still be seen in wild herds of the American west, many of which have been filmed in the wild in Nevada and Wyoming. Perhaps the Curlies are living proof that the genes of the ancient North American horses still exist in modern horse populations, which would mean that they were here before the arrival of the Spanish horses introduced into the Americas after the Spanish conquest. After all, the distinctive genetic marker that separates them from other horses today is the gene for the curly coat.

These ancient horses have also been found in South America. According to author Felix Azara, who wrote in his Natural History of Quadrupeds in Paraguay (1802), “I have seen many curly-haired horses, ones which are called “Pichai” in Paraguay. Their hair is kinky.” In addition, Charles Darwin reports seeing Curly Horses in Paraguay in a book published in 1868. It is very possible that the curly hair of the North American and Paraguayan horses both show a link to the original Equus of North America—a species that never went extinct after all.
    Of course, the question arises, how did these horses survive Noah’s Flood? The simple fact is, that the Curly Horse is a breed akin to the Russian Lokai, a breed of horse indigenous to the Asian Steppes area in Tajikistan. According to Azara, these horses have a connection to pre-Columbian Curly Horse of the Americas found in both Alaska and Paraguay (also Northern United States). Now, Tajikistan, previously known as Tajik, is a mountainous country just to the east of the Caspian Sea where the people currently known as Iranians first populated, making them concurrent with the area where Noah’s Ark landed along the Turkey-Armenian border (an area that was ruled by the Turks) and would have been in the area where many of the animals of the Ark would have filtered into upon being released. Such Curly horses would have been available to the Jaredites, and as the scriptural record tells us they had the horse when in the land of promise (Ether 9:19).
    The point is, the Curly Horse, whose curls shed moisture and contract in winter, giving them a resiliency against the cold, and have gentle temperaments, and a calmness that makes them excellent family horses that are highly intelligent, with good memories and the ability to assess situations and figure things out, existed anciently in only two known places in the world, 1) the Americas, and 2) the Asian Steppes (next door to Mesopotamia) and possibly as far east as China. The Europeans and Spanish who came to America and brought horses, would not have had access to the Asian Steppes horses—animals that are not indigenous to Europe or the Middle East, Africa, etc.

There is also a mention of a Curly Horse in China in 161 A.D., in both artwork and bas-relief statues in the tomb of Emperador Taizong Tang (28 January 598 – 10 July 649), a T’ang dynasty emperor who died in 649, and includes a yellow curly horse.
    For those who deny the Flood, claiming American horses were extinct by 13,000 to 12,000 years ago, the Curly Horse existed in the Americas some 5,000 years later, consequently, would have been in the Americas in pre-Columbian times; for those who accept the Flood, the Jaredites would have had access to the Lokai Curley Horse of the Steppes, and could have brought it to the Americas among their many herds (Ether 9:19), again, and either way, the horse was in America in pre-Columbian times.
   It should also be of interest that Dr. Steven E. Jones, in an article entitled “Were There Horses in the Americas Before Columbus?” Because his comments on this subject are critically important, we list them here extensively:
    “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…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 dating methods.”
    The time frame sought extended “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.”

It should be noted that this study, was sponsored and funded by FARMS (Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies) and ISPART (Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts), both BYU academics organizations, and included only North America and Mesoamerica. No part of the study included South America.
    Dr. Jones continued: “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.”
    On the other hand, “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 [extinct] according to the prevailing paradigm.”
    In addition, other bone specimens were identified in the “extinct horse” time frame, as Dr. Jones points out: “Another Equus specimen was identified by Elaine Anderson, an expert on Equus identification, at Wolf Spider cave, Colorado. It dated to 1260 – 1400 A.D., again clearly before Columbus. Dr. Patricia Fazio of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, has joined our network of researchers in this field…and alerted us to a horse bone found at Horsethief Cave in Wyoming which dates to approximately 3,124 BP, i.e., 1124 BC, using thermoluminescent methods…Dr. Fazio also pointed to a publication, The Wyoming Archaeologist (Vol 38, pp55-68), where results of a horse bone found in Wyoming were dated to 1426 – 1481 A.D. (one sigma calibrated dates) using AMS methods, well before Columbus.”
    It can also be pointed out that a paper by Dr. R. Alison notes evidence for horses in Canada dating 900 and 2900 years ago, and it should be kept in mind that the European horses arrived on the new-world mainland with Cortes in 1519 A.D.--only 500 years ago [Henry, Marguerite and Wesley Dennis. All About Horses. Random House, 1962].

Dr. Jones adds, “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.”
(For sake of better understanding Dr.  Jones, he was a Professor of Physics at Brigham Young University where he served for over 21 years before his retirement in 2007. He conducted doctoral research at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and received his Ph.D. in Physics from Vanderbilt University in 1978. He received his B.S. degree in Physics from Brigham Young University in 1973, where he held a David O. McKay Presidential Scholarship—his research interests include studies in archaeometry, fusion and solar energy).
    Thus, when combining all this information, it is extremely difficult for any critic or appeaser to suggest that the horse did not exist in the Americas prior to the coming of Columbus, the Spanish  conqjuistadors and later the Europeans.