Some apologists have been promising evidence for quite a few years. Is the best we will get found in the Ancient American Magazine? Dr. Steven Jones has an article in that pseudo publication.

Jones mentions "The Wyoming Archaeologist 38: 55-68", of a horse bone found in Wyoming dated to 1426 - 1481 AD. Don't get suckered by this. Radiocarbon dating of this had more than one range. The Wyoming Archaeologist publication can be read online (the report is in two parts).

http://www.wyomingarchaeology.org/images/Wy_Ar_38_3-4_1994_part_2.pdf

http://www.wyomingarchaeology.org/images/Wy_Ar_38_3-4_1994_part_3.pdf

The conclusions in the Wyoming Archaeologist are quite different that what is implied by Dr. Steven Jones. Perhaps that explains why Jones wrote for the pseudo publication "Ancient American" instead of for a credible journal.

Another apologist is still on youtube, influencing the gullible with the Spencer Lake hoax.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkydMSmv1Zo&feature=player_embedded

Mormon scholars at their finest!

1426 AD is a far cry from 600 BC even if it were authentic. Besides Columbus wasn't the first European visitor.

Read the Wyoming archaeologist links. It was Spanish in Wyoming, nothing more. Just earlier than previously known, but well after Coronado.

I was thinking the same thing. The Chinese discovered the coast of America, but never settled it, in the early 1400s, a few decades before Columbus, and the Vikings were in Nova Scotia hundreds of years before that. Now if they had found a horse bone that was from 300 BCE.

Even then the most likely answer is that the bone was from a much later period.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2012 01:03PM by forbiddencokedrinker.

Please don't perpetuate pseudo history about the Chinese.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudohistory

Everyone take a breath. This is about Spanish in Wyoming, nothing more. Cut out the Viking and Chinese diffusionism garbage already.

There were Vikings in the Americas a few hundred years before Columbus, and I wasn't aware that the Chinese voyage had been debunked. I just remember a couple of articles about it.

http://www.1421exposed.com/

Gavin Menzies is an Erich Von Däniken wannabe who wrote a widely read book with the claims about the Chinese fleet that were wholly unfounded.

Because it offered "historical legitimacy" to some ideas by some "nationaliistic Chinese" sorts (not Taiwainese; these are mainlanders within the ruling party; albeit somewhat fringe sorts), this group of scholars made certain the nonsense was exposed and discredited (Menzies, for example, insisted the Chinese fleet had somehow made it all the way to New England as well). The usual practice is for them to remain polite, saying nothing in hopes of not drawing attention to the matter.

There was nothing of substance to Menzie's howlers, but the adage is "bunk sells; debunking doesn't" (see "Mormon, Book of").

Earlier stories of Chinese junks dating to around the third century C.E. were also fabricated even though it is an excellent and sea-worthy vessel. No maritime compass, no transoceanic voyage. And the marine resources from fishing were adequate near the coastlines, so they rarely sailed far out of sight of land.

The Vikings made landfall (by essentially sailing along the polar ice) in Labrador, but that is the extent of their explorations. There was nothing they couldn't obtain easier elsewhere, and their colony failed and returned, probably to Greenland.

Only the Polynesians offer the other possibility of pre-Columbian ocean crossing, and they perfected navigational technology and maritime lore that was second to none. Their bodies even show adaptations to long sea voyages. We know they made it as far as Easter Island and there is some evidence they may have landed in California or along the coast of South America, but that remains largely unproven. Scientific and archaeological inquiry in that direction is wholly reasonable.

Unfortanately, LDS pseudo-scholars (and others equally deluded) have perpetuated the myths of "hyper-diffusion," and crackpot notions abound and are widespread.

Thank you, I had heard the earlier claims, but never the debunking. It seems I have once again fallen for a scam involving a book that depicted ancient people sailing to the Americas in boats. I got to stop falling for those.

And they brought the horses.

Ancient American Magazine was discussed in the Skeptical Inquirer series

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/civilizations_lost_and_found_fabricating_history_-_part_two_false_messages

"In the video, Ancient American magazine’s publisher Wayne May narrates the story of Wyrick’s discovery of the Decalogue Stone"

"This account of the basic facts of the discovery is riddled with errors. Some may seem trivial, but they are important to document because they demonstrate a pattern of carelessness with regard to facts that is depressingly typical of the diffusionist literature."

Here is a more disturbing look at one of the writers at Ancient American Magazine.
http://www.flavinscorner.com/collin.htm

After all of these years, the best that Mormon scholars can do is publish their horse findings in a diffusionist source.

Here is something more about the author of the horse article.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/fall/conspiracy-con

"A California conspiracy conference draws hundreds and earns its promoter thousands while popularizing a series of myths"

"Steven E. Jones, a former physics professor at Brigham Young University who likens himself to Galileo, said his scientific studies have convinced him that planted explosives, not jetliners, brought down the Twin Towers and a third building — still another secret government conspiracy and cover-up."

And now Mormons can claim to have "evidence" of horses. Just don't look for it in "Nature", "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" or "The American Association for the Advancement of Science". The "evidence" is found in a diffusionist publication, the article written by a conspiracy theorist. Another writer for the same publication is a convicted child molestor and former neo-nazi.

Mormon scholars at their finest!

Don't be mislead by the radiocarbon date. The Wyoming Archaeologist article explains it better. The horse was not from the time of Columbus's first voyage. The conclusion by the scientists in Wyoming places it in the mid 1600s.

More on the spread of the horse in America after Columbus:

The Influence of the Horse in the Development of Plains Culture
http://archive.org/stream/americananthropo16ameruoft#page/n7/mode/2up

Where did the Plains Indians get their Horses
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1938.40.1.02a00110/pdf

The Northward Spread of Horses Among the Plains Indians
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1938.40.3.02a00060/pdf

If horses (descendants of the conquistadors' animals) had spread as far as Wyoming by the 1600s, they would have been ubiquitous in the new world, from the plains of Argentina to the plains of Alberta, had they been introduced in 600 BCE.

The new world societies that used horses dominated other societies that did not (see the Comanches in Texas).

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/bmc72

Also, if the societies in Mexico and Peru had horses at the time of the arrival of the conquistadors, the latter would have been handily dispatched - in short order - by their new world foes.

For me, it's just more evidence that the BOM is bunk.

Oh, dear. I hadn't seen this before. The "considerable evidence" of horses Peterson and Tvedtnes tout is extremely problematic. It's interesting that they (who are not archaeologists) dismiss the scientific consensus as evidence of preconceived notions and prejudice.

Not surprisingly, they rely on the tired "loan-shift" argument to dismiss the description of chariots, which are associated with horses in the text. The BofM suggests that animals were used as beasts of burden to transport people. This is a major anachronism that cannot be explained by saying that Joseph Smith translated it wrong. There were no beasts of burden in the areas where the Book of Mormon is supposed to have taken place. The closest are the Andean llama, alpaca, and vicuna, but these were not used to convey people but as pack animals.

It's also ridiculous to suggest that the survival of mammoths on a Russian island in the Arctic Sea has anything to do with Lamanites and Nephites.

And llamas and alpacas are Camelids. I think that the word Camel was well known in Joes time. Would have been a hard one to not get right. Are camels even mentioned in the BoM?

Yes camels are mentioned, but I don't think to any extent given how much the natives relied on them for wool and as pack animals.

Horses originated in the Americas, but died out during the ice age or shortly after I think.

ya know horses in Americas pre Christ is the least of their worries about what's wrong with Mormonism

It's those damn ferrets and wooden submarines they need to lose first.

The best evidence they can give is in pseudo publications. The best they can provide is not found at all in credible, reputable scholarly publications. That is the least of their worries? Mormon scholars must be a deluded lot to say the least.

In fact it is believed that horses evolved in america and then spread to the old world through the same land bridge that humans spread to the new world, during the ice age. Problem is they went extinct thousands of years before Adam supposedly lived in missouri (they appearantly went extinct before death even existed in the world, how did that happen?). That's another mormon problem with horses in america.

God, lacking somewhat in empathetic understanding of the human condition, is using the Holy Obfuscator of words to convey the message of there being horses, to what must have been the unholy and fallen writers Moroni and Mormon, and Joseph Smith Jr. wasn't living worthy enough to receice the Corrector and Coordinator of BOTH words and meanings. And the true Saint, as we all know, should only find it all in perfect order of course no matter what words are being used. So what's the big deal - the worthy ones are clinging to the emotional state of their blind Faith's safety condition. Oh say what is truth? Is Science given to us by a better God than that judeochristan ancient false One? Can scientific evidence improve on 'The Holy Ghost Experience' orchestra, make it play clearer, more humane, more democratic, more open and honest, more updated, more realistic, more real? Are my own words here playing in tune? Did you really read all of it?

Forget those wimpy horses….where did they get those bloody elephants?

The bright side is that commenting who's doing the dangling under them isn't considered as equally foul language?

They probably floated in on driftwood. Kind of like the Jaredites.

You can put the horse before Descartes, but not before Columbus.

Oh, and by the way anon for this, thanks for linking to the Wyoming Archaeologist.

Richard the Bad (an archaeologist in Wyoming)

Your welcome. It had to be done. Anytime someone takes the oldest date of a radiocarbon range to claim something different than the finding, the source source should be read.

This is what the magazine says about its editorial policy.

"The purpose of Ancient American magazine is to describe the prehistory of the American Continent, regardless of presently fashionable beliefs--- to provide a public forum for certified experts and nonprofessionals alike to freely express their views without fear nor favor.

In sharp contrast to majority academic opinion, its editorial position stands firmly on behalf of evidence for the arrival of overseas visitors to the Americas hundreds and even thousands of years before Columbus--- not only from Europe, but the Near East, Africa, Asia, and the Western Pacific."

The magazine is run by Mormons as a vehicle to publish biased pseudoscience that looks like it supports the Book of Mormon.

It has been my understanding that equines have evolved from small three toed Eohippus to the present day Equine over the course of 50 million years...are there newer "revelations" to this theory? (sorry, I couldn't help throwing Revelations in there ! )

"Assuming the radiocarbon dates obtained from the horse remains place the age of this animal in the mid-17th century, this is one of the earliest examples of modern horse in Wyoming during Protohistoric period."

All this tells me is that the horse was an incredibly useful beast of burden, and once introduced to the New World, its use spread rapidly and widely.