Were there Horses in the Americas before Columbus?

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Ancient American, 2012, 1:95, 5-6
Were there Horses in the Americas before Columbus?
Steven E. Jones
S&J Scientific Co., Provo, UT, 84606, USA
This letter is in response to a request from Wayne May for information regarding my research on
early horses (Equus) in the Americas, before the arrival of Columbus. This interim material is shared
in order to encourage a wider community to join in the task of gathering further evidence
regarding pre-Columbian horses in the Americas, including a request for photos of pictographs,
petroglyphs and engravings which may represent pre-Columbian horses.
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. My special thanks
to FARMS and ISPART who funded much of the project in years past. 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 (AMS) dating
methods. The reliability of the AMS method of radiocarbon dating of bones is delineated in:
Radiocarbon, Volume 34, Number 3, pp. 279-291.
The goal was to provide radiocarbon dates for samples that appeared from depth or other
considerations to be pre-Columbian. The time frame of interest can be expressed in terms of
“Before Present” by convention and extends 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.
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.
By contrast, 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 according to the prevailing paradigm.
Another Equus specimen was identified by Elaine Anderson, an expert on Equus
identification, at Wolf Spider cave, Colorado. It dated to AD 1260 - 1400, again clearly before
Columbus. Note that horses arrived on the new-world mainland with Cortes in 1519 AD
[Henry, Marguerite and Wesley Dennis. All About Horses. Random House, 1962.]
Dr. Patricia Fazio of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, has joined our
network of researchers in this field. Dr. Fazio (private communication) alerted us to a horse
bone found at Horsethief Cave in Wyoming which dates to approximately 3,124 BP, i.e., 1100
BC, using thermoluminescent methods. We attempted to have this bone re-dated using the
AMS methods which are more accurate, but there proved to be insufficient collagen in the bone
to permit AMS dating. The 1100 BC date (although approximate) still stands.
Dr. Fazio also pointed to a publication, The Wyoming Archaeologist 38: 55-68, where
results of a horse bone found in Wyoming were dated to 1426 - 1481 AD (one sigma calibrated
dates) using AMS methods, well before Columbus. The authors express difficulty in
explaining this early date: “These radiocarbon dates place the horse skeleton at a very early
age for modern horses to have been in Wyoming.”
A paper by Dr. R. Alison notes evidence for horses in Canada dating 900 and 2900 years ago; also
in the period of interest:
However, the compete extirpation of ancestral horse stock in Canada has yet to be
completely confirmed and a bone found near Sutherland, Saskatchewan, at the Riddell
archaeological site suggests some horses might have survived much later. The bone
(Canadian Museum of Nature I-8581), has been tentatively dated at about 2900 years ago.
Another Equus sp. Bone, found at Hemlock Park Farm, Frontenac County, Ontario, dates to
about 900 years ago. Exhaustive confirmation of both bones has yet to be completed, but if
they prove to be authentic, they comprise evidence that horses survived in Canada into
comparatively modern times.
http://members.shaw.ca/save-wild-horses/Research%20Paper%20-%20R.%20Alison.htm
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.
In addition to this hard physical evidence, a number of researchers are looking seriously
into oral histories of native Americans which point rather clearly to the existence of horses
before the Spanish arrived. In particular, we note that research results have been published by
Yuri Kuckinsky [http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku/tran/thor.htm ] and Claire Henderson
[http://printfu.org/horses+north+dakota or http://printfu.org/read/the-aboriginal-north-
american-horse-ae23.html?f=1qeXpurpn6Wih-
SUpOGumaqnh8DX24W1ytTi29DX4sfhjbPb4erNlKnS1eTS0dXUlbXU3uLbh6_bn6Gsi9SWo
einm6SpmM3o3NWqoZjl692j2trf49fT29uZ5eWX0ePTpK7H2-
HfzN3WxtyXm57C1efhzZGhpqbhzdfZ1crcmZiltdTe4tuT5MzLkq3m ]. For example, the
Appaloosa horse appears to have been in North America before the Spanish brought European
horses.

A January 2012 publication describes progress in DNA analyses of horses which promises to
open new avenues for this research:
"In recent years, many scholars have embraced the hypothesis that the Botai or other
inhabitants of the Eurasian Steppes became the first people to tame the wild horse, Equus ferus,
between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago. This theory implies that horses were domesticated in a
similar manner to other modern livestock, such as cattle, sheep and goats, said Alessandro
Achilli, a geneticist at the University of Pavia in Italy. DNA analyses have revealed little
genetic variation among these animals, suggesting that they descended from a small group of
ancestors tamed in just a few places, he explained.
“But when Achilli and a team of fellow researchers collected maternally inherited mitochondrial
genomes from living horses in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, a strikingly different
picture emerged. “We found a high number of different lineages that we were able to identify—at
least 18,” said Achilli, a co-author of a paper outlining the findings in the January 30 issue of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....
“Why would disparate groups in far-flung corners of the globe hatch similar schemes to forge
partnerships with their equine neighbors? “The very fact that many wild mares were independently
domesticated in different places testifies to how significant horses have been to humankind,” Achilli
said....
“The latest findings have the potential to open new avenues for further research into horses both
modern and ancient, Achilli said. “Now that a large number of horse lineages have been defined,
they could be easily employed not only to analyze other modern breeds, including thoroughbreds,
but also to classify ancient remains,” he explained. - http://www.history.com/news/2012/01/30/horse-
domestication-happened-across-eurasia-study-shows/
In particular, the Equus samples that have been identified in North America, anomalous
because they date to the “excluded” period between 6,000 BC and 1490 AD, can now be
analyzed to determine whether or not the DNA corresponds to domesticated Spanish horses
brought over by the Conquistadores. My prediction is that the DNA will not so correspond.
In conclusion, using state-of-the-art dating methods, we along with other researchers have
found radiometrically-dated evidence for the existence of horses in North America long after
the last ice age and before the arrival of Columbus. These data challenge the existing
paradigm. Further DNA analyses will provide additional insights.
Background of Professor Steven E. Jones:
Prof. Steven 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. He 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 (Oct. 1998), pp.
128-142. The horse-bone dating project fits very well into Dr. Jones’ long-range plans for research in
archaeometry. However, his peer-reviewed papers and experiments challenging the official 9/11
narrative (google “Dr BYU”) proved controversial and he was offered early retirement.