TA DA!!! My Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica website

[_CaliforniaKid]

Posted on MADB by Smac:



C. Ray, Pre-Columbian Horses from Yucatan, The Journal of Mammalogy, Vol 38, No 2, p. 278

[_CaliforniaKid]

I also ran across this:

Were Ancient Americans Familiar with Real Horses? The FARMS newsletter published an Update in June 1984 on the question of horses in pre-Columbian America during the period when human beings were here. That piece was republished in Reexploring the Book of Mormon under the title "Once More: The Horse."1 Since then, previously unrecognized research has shed new light on the question. The most striking information comes from excavations that confirm the possibility that a species of native American horse survived the Pleistocene (Ice Age) in Mesoamerica down to an age when humans were familiar with this animal.

Publications from the late 1950s reported results from excavations by scientists working on the Yucatan Peninsula. Excavations at the site of Mayapan, which dates to a few centuries before the Spaniards arrived, yielded horse bones in four spots. (Two of the lots were from the surface, however, and might represent Spanish horses.) From another site, the Cenote (water hole) Ch'en Mul, came other traces, this time from a firm archaeological context. In the bottom stratum in a sequence of levels of unconsolidated earth almost two meters in thickness, two horse teeth were found. They were partially mineralized, indicating that they were definitely ancient and could not have come from any Spanish animal. The interesting thing is that Maya pottery was also found in the stratified soil where the teeth were located.2

Subsequent digging has expanded the evidence for an association of humans with horses. But the full story actually goes back to 1895, when American paleontologist Henry C. Mercer went to Yucatan hoping to find remains of Ice Age man. He visited 29 caves in the hill area—the Puuc—of the peninsula and tried stratigraphic excavation in 10 of them. But the results were confused, and he came away disillusioned. He did find horse bones in three caves (Actun Sayab, Actun Lara, and Chektalen). In terms of their visible characteristics, those bones should have been classified as from the Pleistocene American horse species, then called Equus occidentalis L. However, Mercer decided that since the remains were near the surface, they must actually be from the modern horse, Equus equus, that the Spaniards had brought with them to the New World, and so he reported them as such.3 In 1947 Robert T. Hatt repeated Mercer's activities. He found within Actun Lara and one other cave more remains of the American horse (in his day it was called Equus conversidens), along with bones of other extinct animals. Hatt recommended that any future work concentrate on Loltun Cave, where abundant animal and cultural remains could be seen.4

It took until 1977 before that recommendation bore fruit. Two Mexican archaeologists carried out a project that included a complete survey of the complex system of subterranean cavities (made by underground water that had dissolved the subsurface limestone). They also did stratigraphic excavation in areas in the Loltun complex not previously visited. The pits they excavated revealed a sequence of 16 layers, which they numbered from the surface downward. Bones of extinct animals (including mammoth) appear in the lowest layers.

Pottery and other cultural materials were found in levels VII and above. But in some of those artifact-bearing strata there were horse bones, even in level II. A radiocarbon date for the beginning of VII turned out to be around 1800 BC. The pottery fragments above that would place some portions in the range of at least 900–400 BC and possibly later. The report on this work concludes with the observation that "something went on here that is still difficult to explain." Some archaeologists have suggested that the horse bones were stirred upward from lower to higher levels by the action of tunneling rodents, but they admit that this explanation is not easy to accept. The statement has also been made that paleontologists will not be pleased at the idea that horses survived to such a late date as to be involved with civilized or near-civilized people whose remains are seen in the ceramic-using levels.5 Surprisingly, the Mexican researchers show no awareness of the horse teeth discovered in 1957 by Carnegie Institution scientists Pollock and Ray. (Some uncomfortable scientific facts seem to need rediscovering time and time again.)

Meanwhile, Dr. Steven E. Jones of the BYU physics department has for several years been tracking down horse bones in North America considered to predate the European conquest. Professor Jones's purpose for this search is to submit the bones to tests by the radiocarbon method (some of that work has taken advantage of assistance from FARMS). So far, one or more finds appear to be possibly of pre-Spanish Conquest date, although definitive results will take more work. Further work is being done by Yuri Kuchinsky, a researcher in Canada who has been pursuing a variety of other evidence, based mainly on Native American lore, about possible pre-Conquest horses in North America.

http://farms.BYU.edu/display.php?id=246&table=jbms

-Chris

[_beastie]

Thanks so much, those are great. I'll be using them in my update, which I hope to get to soon.

What is interesting about the C. Ray reference is that equus conversidens dates from the Pleistocene era. Yes, that is "pre-Mayan".

This Steven Jones supposed ground breaking research has been rumored on the internet for literally years. I'll believe it when I see it. It's interesting how the FARMs article only mentions the dating of the material around the horse. The most obvious explanation to me is that the later peoples were keeping the horse teeth as precious objects.

Again, thanks so much for your help in this! by the way, what MAD thread did smac share this on?

[_CaliforniaKid]

It's a thread about Alf O'mega blasting the Maxwell Institute: http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index. ... 31646&st=0

[_Who Knows]

This Steven Jones supposed ground breaking research has been rumored on the internet for literally years. I'll believe it when I see it. It's interesting how the FARMs article only mentions the dating of the material around the horse. The most obvious explanation to me is that the later peoples were keeping the horse teeth as precious objects.

Is this the same steven jones as the 9/11 conspiracy theorist nutjob? Wasn't he fired by BYU?

[_beastie]

I've been assuming it's one and the same. Could there be two BYU profs named Steven Jones?

And from the thread chris linked, I gotta give Katherine the Great her usual props:

Well, I'm not Alf O'mega, but I've never seen any reputable scientific publications citing horses (Equus) in the Americas during Book of Mormon times. When a scientifically sound discovery happens, this will be huge news, and no one will have to cite arcane, unreliable sources as evidence. It will be front page news.

Amen, sister, amen.

[_beastie]

Oh, and many, many thanks to phaedrus who provided a reference I've been hunting down for a while:

Not since the early years of 14C dating, when laboratory protocols for sample selection and pretreatment were not standardized or well understood by consumers of dates (see, e.g., Martin 1958 and Hester 1960), has anyone seriously advanced the thought that mammoths or mastodons survived into the mid-Holocene. Those North American Holocene dates of yore were not replicated and could not be supported stratigraphically and geochemically. They moulder in the graveyard of unverified measurements.[RADIOCARBON, VoL. 37, No. 1, 1995, P. 7-10]MAMMOTH EXTINCTION: TWO CONTINENTS AND WRANGEL ISLAND, PAUL S. MARTIN

[_beastie]

OMG! I just knew it, I knew it - it is not possible to have a thread on horses on the Book of Mormon at MAD without the infamous whack-a-mole Chapman article. BCspace is the offender this time.

http://www.2s2.com/chapmanresearch/user ... orses.html

This is one of the worst pieces of "scholarship" I've seen on the subject, and yet it is eternally popular. It cites Ica stones, which are known frauds, it shows a horribly distorted photograph that only looks like a horse because of the distortion (I've got to add that to my site, as well, but first have to hunt down the thread I discussed it on... I think it was here on MD, it took me a while to unravel that one). It also features the "pictograph" which contains carvings of a far later date that earlier carvings, and so on. Although I have not been able to hunt down every photo on this essay, I feel safe guessing that each one would turn out to be fraudulent or SPURIOUS in some way.

[_beastie]

by the way, I have no idea what the cattle bones reference is. It's not possible to follow up on every arcane lead from articles 50+ years old.

[_beastie]

Too funny. DCP is still using the Wisconsin reference, despite its debunking.

http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index. ... opic=31661

Luigui asked:

In the FAIR video on horses in the America's http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 3219264689 Dr. Daniel Peterson refers to carbon dating on a horse in the upper midwest of the United States. I sincerely hope he is not refering to the Wisconsin horse that we had discussed in a past thread that has been established as a fraud: http://archaeology.about.com/od/frauds/ ... r_lake.htm I had pointed this out on a thread discussing horses several months ago so I am hoping that Dr. Peterson can establish that either this new FAIR video was filmed before he was aware that it was a fraud or that he is refering to some other discovery of horse bones in which case I would be very interested in a reference.

DCP's vague answer:

I'm still here, but leave in just a few minutes for bishop's interviews, which will keep me busy until very late. I fly to Egypt early on Friday morning, and may even stay at someone's house closer to the airport tomorrow night. In the meantime, I have several important things to take care of tomorrow, including teaching a senior Middle East studies seminar and finishing off an article.

So I've written to a friend who is more current on the horse issue than I am at the moment, to see what he has to say.

If a piece of evidence that I cited turns out to be unreliable, I will cheerfully acknowledge it. If it doesn't, however, I won't.

And Zak naïvely asks:

Dr. Petersen... Is the Spencer Lake skull the one you where citing in the video?