Where Are the Land of Promise Horses? – Part VI

Continued from the previous post regarding the horse and horse remains found in the Americas, and specifically South America, since North America and Central America have been discussed in previous posts.
South America: 
    First of all, it should be noted that in the area of Andean South America, numerous bones of horses and other animals have been found in tar seeps and tar pits, the latter like those of La Brea, California. Equus horse bones have been found in a tar seep location that preserved a dense assemblage of megafaunal remains in hydrocarbon-saturated sediments along with microfaunal and paleobotanical material, that has a claimed date between 15000 and 21000 BC.

Ecuadorian Tar Pits where numerous animal remains have been found throughout Ecuador

Located in the Tanque Loma, Ecuador, along the Santa Elena peninsula (which contains some of the best-preserved assemblages of megafaunal remains known). The entire site, which has produced over 1000 bones, though not a single carnivore among them (Emily L. Lindsay and Eric X. Lopez, “Tanque Loma, a new late-Pleistocene megafaunal tar seep locality from southwest Ecuador,” Journal of South American Earth Sciences, Vol.57, Elsevier, Amsterdam, Netherlands, January 2015; pp61-82).
    Other locations where these bones have been found is in the Inter-Andean Basin, Quito, Bolivar, Corralito, and the Carchi Province; as well as others in Peru. One of the latter is that of Talara, about 40 miles northwest of Piura, along the coast where a tar trap contained a fossil horse jaw, along with 28,000 bones, including elephants, horses and carnivores (K. Seymour, Perusing Talara; Overview of the Late Pleistocene fossils from the tar seeps of Peru,” Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Science Series, Vol.42, 2015, pp97-109).
    While it is true that the dates involved are about the end of the Ice Age, it should be kept in mind that there were no ice sheets in South America during the Last Glacial Maximum north of Chilean Patagonia. There was ice along the peaks of the Andes in Peru, but the area of the above tar pit and seeps were located along the coast, which during the Last Ice Age was considered “Tropical Desert” or “Tropical Grassland” or “Temperate Steppe Grassland.” The point being, there would have been no reason for any horses in western South America to have become extinct as in the far north of North America where the glaciers were located. Thus this concept of Equus horse becoming extinct throughout South America, even Central America and Mexico to the Central Plains of North America, is hardly valid.
    In addition, and more to the point of the time period between the Ice Age and the arrival of the Spanish, Sebastian Cabot (Sebastiano Caboto or Gaboto) son of Venetian navigator and explorer John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) whose 1497 discovery of the coast of North America under the commission of Henry VIII of England, brings us a knowledge of horses in South America during the recent age of man. While his father’s discovery was the first European exploration of coastal North America since the Norse visits to Vinland in the eleventh century, Sebastian, who was with his father in North America, mounted his own explorations of South America.

Left: John Cabot in traditional Venetian clothing, discovering the Canadian east coast of North America in 1497; Right: Sebastian Cabot, son of John, and navigator and cartographer who sailed to South America in 1526 along the Argentina coast and upriver on the Rio de la Plata; and the Paraná River into Uruguay

After his father's death, Sebastian Cabot conducted his own voyages of discovery, seeking the Northwest Passage in 1508-1509 through North America for England. He later sailed for Spain, traveling to South America, where he explored the Rio de la Plata (known originally as Mar Dulce) in Argentina and the Paraná River into Uruguay. As a cartographer, Sebastian detailed the lands of Southern South America, inserting a sketch of a horse in the rolling grasslands of Argentina on his World Map of 1544, which sketches were intended to portray the primary assets of each region. Consequently, it seems certain that he noted the presence of vast herds of horses in Argentina during his sailing there in 1526. Sebastian’s expedition into Argentina took place just ten years after the Spanish expedition by major (Senior) pilot Juan Diaz de Solis to the Rio de Plata—neither expedition had horses on board their ships, and neither of the parties spent but brief moments on any inland shore.

Sebastian Cabot’s 1533 drawing on his "Tabula del gran río" map of the horse, a jaguar, and a parrot accurately drawn along the Paraná River

In fact, since his maps, as well as all those of that period, used symbols, animals or characters to demonstrate something indigenous about the land depicted, it would have been without merit to have placed horses in the land of Argentina on Sebastian’s map if these were Spanish or European horses, since they would not have represented the land. Consequently, the presence of a horse on a land in a 1544 map could only mean that such an animal well represented the land drawn. To support these being indigenous horses, later settlers in this land noted that the Argentine horse was nothing like the Spanish horse, and had an unusually comfortable walking gait; so they named these mounts Paso Fino (meaning “Walks Good”). This, by the way, matches the previously mentioned special pre-Columbian horses found among the Chickasaws,” which had a smooth-walking gait as did horses found in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida that were called “Seminole ponies” or “prairie ponies” in North America.
    Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, who was a British authority on zoology, and who held chairs at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, wrote in a book published in 1910: “It is also said that the Araucanian Indians of Patagonia have a peculiar breed of ponies, which may be derived in part from a native South American stock” (Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, Science from an Easy Chair, Methuen, London, 1910—there have been 59 editions of this book published between 1910 and 2013).
    It should also be noted that the existence of ancient, indigenous horses on the American continent was only first accepted in 1848, when Richard Owen described a fossil horse from South America. The first scientific paper on ancient horses in the Americas was published that same year by American paleontologist, parasitologist and anatomist Joseph Leidy, professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania and later professor of natural history at Swarthmore College.
    However, horse fossils, bones, and teeth have now been found in North, Central, and South America. Unfortunately for this solution for the Book of Mormon, however, mainstream scholars typically see such theories as unworthy fringe writing and claims among questionable writers. Due to the lack of acceptance through archaeological support of numerous well-founded and well-carried out efforts in the Americas, most scholars continue to believe that horses became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene period.

A group of archaeologists using ArchaeChemis equipment involved in Archaeology and Archaeometry studies, which include chemical solitons in Archaeometry

 

Much of this was reported by Dr. Steven Jones of BYU in his work on finding evidence of pre-Columbian and post extinct horses in the Americas. The problem lies in mainstream science ridiculing Dr. Jones and his extensive work and writing. It might be of interest to give a little background on the man being so maligned in his reporting. Professor Jones was a full Professor of Physics at Brigham Young University, where he served for over 21 years before his early 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. For those unfamiliar with this field, “archaeometry” is merely the actual term for “Archaeological science,” which is the application of scientific techniques to the analysis of archaeological materials to assist in dating the materials, relating to methodologies of archaeology. In any event, Dr. Jones has published papers in Nature, Scientific American, and Physical Review Letters. He taught an advanced class on Archaeometry (Physics 513R) and published “Archaeometry Applied to Olmec Iron-ore Beads” (BYU Studies 37, No.4, October 1998), pp.128-142).
    While this blog is not trying to vindicate or promote Dr. Jones’ work, we certainly feel his credentials deserve to be considered and understood in light of the questions about his horse research and claims in the Americas. We are certainly not suggesting there is any conspiracy afoot as many do, we are merely stating that mainstream science has to be reevaluated and changed from time to time as new evidences, new knowledge, and new findings become available and are accepted by mainstream scientists. It should be noted that thoseon the cutting edge and at the forefront of such advanced knowledge are often shunned by mainstream thinking until such thinking is accepted ny those in the mainstream. Dr. Jones may well be ahead of this mainstream curve.
(See the next post, “Where Are the Land of Promise Horses? – Part VII,” for more information about horses in the Americas and specifically in South America)