Horses in America and Book of Mormon

spanner Sep. 2012

Just posting some links to recent stuff on Horses in America. Research is honing in on the time horses finally went extinct in the Americas, which was thousands of years before the Jaredites supposedly set sail.

This article is quite comprehensive and has links:
http://www.horsetalk.co.nz/features/extinction-176.shtml

One link that it misses is this:
http://www.amnh.org/our-research/science-news/2009/late-surviving-megafa...
This study takes soil samples, dates them (using two separate methods for accuracy) and then screens for animal DNA. Amazing. The technique means that the presence of animals can be determined without having to rely on finding fossils. It turns out that small horse populations may have hung around a bit longer than is indicated by fossil (or bone) finds.

The dwindling remnants of the dying horse and mammoth populations can be detected in a soil sample from 7600 - 10500 years ago. What was interesting was the controls for cross- contamination - more recent samples had NO horse and mammoth but did contain hare, bison, and moose. So... at the present state of knowledge there is no evidence of an ancient american horse culture, no physical remains from within the last 10000-odd years, and no soil DNA within the last 7600 years on the Yukon (where isolated populations may have persisted).

The study was published in 2009. I am surprised none of the wealthy Mormon faithful have bankrolled a study looking for horse DNA in Mesoamerican dirt. Or anywhere in the last 4500 years in the Americas.

bc
Re: Horses in America
I did some research in this earlier in the summer.

One thing I found fascinating was this huge discovery that based on new finds the timeline of when horses die off might have been wrong.

In fact there were now revising the theory that they were off by 200 years - still many thousands of years before BoM time.

To me it pinpointed just how weak the Mormon apologetic argument of "well there might have been horses, we just don't have enough archeological evidence" is. They actually have plenty of evidence and have it pinpointed quite specifically.

spanner
Re: Horses in America
Some apologists have used evidence of humans and horses coexisting to infer Nephite charioteers. There is evidence that early humans hunted horses before they finally went extinct, but still thousands of years before BoM times.

There is 5000 years worth of evidence of horse culture in Asia and Europe. And only some gnawed bones and butchered remains from a dying species in America.

ghost buster
Re: Horses in America
This is one issue that I knew was fishy as a TBM although it never bothered me enough to get me out. My friends and I would always just replied with "but there WERE horses b/c the book of mormon says so". But it's also another one that clearly shows that ole joe was clearly talking out his ass.

EXMO or MO
Re: Horses in America
What about the horses the indians were using?
The ones they had as early as the 1600's on record?
I hear people say they're from the cortez groups that went wild and populated north america. but are they really?
Heresy
Re: Horses in America
Horses are so valuable to tribes of humans that they will be immediately exploited and integrated into tribal life. Native Americans got the point of horses immediately.

If the horses had been here before Columbus, the Natives would have figured out how to use them as well, and left evidence.

bc
Re: Horses in America
It always cracks me up when apologists somehow twist evidence against the church as evidence for it.

Nibley was the master. For example clearly the whole Nephi chop of Laban's head story is ridiculous on many levels. Nibley sites this ridiculousness as evidence that Joseph Smith didn't make it up - if Joseph Smith had made it up, he would have made it seem more realistic...ok

imaworkinonit
What a TBM would hear in that statement:
There are new finds that demonstrate the timeline of when horses died off were wrong.

Once again, scientists are now showing that you can't rely on their dating methods.

Mormoney
Re: Horses in America
And scientists know how to admit when they're wrong and they don't cover it up, burn all the old publications and reissue it as if that's how it was all along.

AmIDarkNow?
Re: Horses in America
This point exactly! The assertion that the lamanites for whatever reason, stopped using horses and domesticated animals after they destroyed the nephites and that now we can’t find evidence of such is the same as the unsupportable assertion if America and South America went into war with domesticated animals and knowledge of the wheel, that the victor would come out of said war and then having domesticated animals and the wheel go to the wayside.

And that is only with domesticated animals and the wheel. It doesn’t include all the other technology that the nephrites had as claimed in the BOM. The enormity of the lack of evidence and the ridiculous apologies are why real archeologists won’t even comment on the silliness of using the BOM as a historical record.

Nancy Rigdon
Re: Horses in America
I am no history expert, but as I understand it, the NAs got their butts kicked in the 1500's when the Spaniards arrived with horses and steel swords- neither of which was known to NAs, yet both horses and steel swords are recorded in the BOM. Horses and steel swords were both well known by the time Joseph's Myth came along.

AmIDarkNow?
Re: Horses in America
"nephrites"

I crack myself up!

jacob
Those are the people who got their asses kicked by the Lamanwrongs. 

B.H. Roberts
Horse Manure in the Book of Mormon

Ex-CultMember
Re: Horses in America
Even IF they could date horses to BoM times, there's also the problem of no archaeological evidence for horses found in human made objects such as paintings, saddles, etc. If horses WERE used in BoM times, there be TONS of archaeological evidence for it. In addition, if the horse was domesticated and used by man for transportation, warfare, etc it would have been breeded and highly prized and unlikely to have simply gone extinct.

weeder
How many mishies use the film: "Ancient America Speaks" anymore? nuff-said.
bc
Re: Horses in America
Not to mention the text of the Book of Mormon would have used it in the wars. Calvary would have been a huge advantage. Captain Moroni made every other medieval war advancement in a period of 20 years...
Heresy
Re: Horses in America
Horses are an incredible tool of war for humans. For the first time, you can raid your neighboring tribe, do a lot of damage, and be out of the area before they put their boots on. You can post guards around your own territory who can give you notice of incoming threats. In larger states, you can keep all your people up to date and control information.

Horses are a form of technology that also spreads easily. Once you've seen a warrior on a horse, you can pretty easily see what to do with one and why it is so valuable. They aren't that hard to catch and domesticate. It isn't like steel and guns, which would baffle stone age people.

It isn't something you forget how to use, ever. It's kind of like writing, money, wheat, compasses....

onendagus
Re: Horses in America
Yes they really are. Look the horse thing is only an argument in the Mormons mind. Everyone else and I do mean EVERYONE else knows and agrees they began on the American continent, migrated to Asia, died out in America and were reintroduced by the spanish. The natives were astonished and afraid of them.

If you are harboring any last hope the bom is anything it claims to be, i recommend listening to the podcast with John Dehlin and Micahael Coe. The bom is a fantasy. The only people that think otherwise are called mormons and quite a few of them are beginning to wake up too.

I didn't coin this but the the guttenburg bible is to catholocism what the internet is to mormonism.

"Recovery from Mormonism - www.exmormon.org"